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Toward a New Synthesis: Population ics and Evolutionary Developmental Biology
Norman A. Johnson
Adam H. Porter
Department of Entomology
And
Program anismic and Evolutionary Biology
102 Fernald Hall
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003
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Abstract
Despite the recent synthesis of developmental ics and evolutionary biology,
current theories of adaptation are still strictly phenomenological and do not yet consider
the implications of how phenotypes are constructed from genotypes. Given the ubiquity
of regulatory ic pathways in developmental processes, we contend that study of the
population ics of these pathways should e a major research program. We
discuss the role divergence in regulatory developmental ic pathways may play in
speciation, focusing on our theoretical putational investigations. We also discuss
the population ics of molecular co-option, arguing that mutations of large effect are
not needed for co-option. We offer a prospectus for future research, arguing for a new
synthesis of the population ics of development.
Keywords—developmental ics, evolution of development, G matrices,
ic co-option, ic pathways, mutation effective size, population ics,
quantitative ics, speciation.
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Biologists studying and predicting micro-evolutionary change generally focus on
variation within populations. One major sub-field of micro-evolutionary studies is
population ics, which in the strictest sense involves tracking changes of frequencies
of alleles and genotypes within and among populations across time and space (Futyuma
1998). Quantitative ics, another sub-field of micro-evolution, by contrast is a
“statistical branch of ics based upon fundamental Mendelian principles extended to
a polygenic (multilocus) characters….phrased in terms of phenotypic means and
variances”(Lynch and Walsh, 1998, p. 5). The line between population and quantitative
ics, especially with the prevalence of qu