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Developmental Plasticity and Evolution

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Developmental Plasticity and Evolution by Mary Jane West-Eberhard is an enormously important contribution to the modern (neo-Darwinian) theory of organic evolution. It presents a new way of understanding evolution. The book teaches us how environmental induction of purely phenotypic events, including learning, can drive evolution, and why a plastic and modular phenotype should replace mutation at the center stage of evolutionary thinking. It is my prediction that this book will precipitate a revolution in thought within biology, but that this will take time, as has any major new idea. Biologists in all fields related to evolution are encouraged to read this work.

The book contains a masterful synthesis of biological facts and theories on the broadest of scales. It unites all disciplines within the biological sciences. It is not, however, merely an impressive review. Rather, it captures a vast collection of data and brilliantly organizes it around a set of fundamental principles about development and evolution from which the main messages of the book are crystallized. Whereas many of the concepts may be described as relatively simple, contemplating the connections between them, as well as their overall unification, becomes an infinitely more challenging and fascinating task. It is from this unification that West-Eberhard's coherent theory of development and evolution blossoms. Expertly guiding the reader from individual concepts to coherent theory, West-Eberhard captures our imagination at every twist and turn, and catapults the reader's mind in a myriad of unexpected directions. The writing is crisp, clean and captivating. The book is filled with exciting and highly felicitous examples from natural history, touching upon the lives of all kinds of organisms, from prions to elm trees and African elephants. The pages are richly textured with detailed examples, illustrations and various intellectual gems. One such delight is a discussion of Darwin's pangenesis theory and how it fails in light of sterile castes in the Hymenoptera.

The book's main contribution to modern evolutionary biology is the revolutionary idea that environmental influences on development, not mutation, are the first order cause of design. This view is a fundamental alteration of emphasis in a field obsessed with genes, genetic drift and mass selection. The book places major emphasis on the importance of genetic accommodation, which occurs when developmentally-mediated changes in the phenotype are molded by quantitative genetic change. The hypothesis of genetic accommodation can be understood as beginning when the environment induces a phenotypic change. This change imposes a new selective regime onto pre-existing polygenic variation. In this way, we are encouraged to understand genes as "followers", as opposed to "leaders" in evolution. The variants can be inherited in subsequent generations if the environmental conditions inducing them are recurrent, and if there is genetic variation underlying the population in the developmental capacity to produce them. Natural selection will favor the spread of a particular environmentally-induced variant when it has positive effects on individual fitness. Although both mutation and environmental induction are considered important modes of initiation of new phenotypic variation, West-Eberhard's argument is that environmental induction is in fact more important.

This thesis challenges the modern gene-centered view of evolution, and in so doing, drives the final nail in the coffin of the "one-gene-one-phenotype" illusion. The book encourages the view that a unified science of evolution can only be achieved with a thorough integration of development into evolutionary biology. To this end, Mary Jane West-Eberhard's treatise is an enormous success. By showing how environmentally influenced development contributes to the origin of novelty in all organisms, the book provides a key missing component of a modern evolutionary theory that biology has been lacking since Darwin. The book is essential reading for all graduate students, researchers and teachers of biology.

This book is meant to educate - to lead away from the sterile debates of causation as NATURE OR NURTURE. It is a monumental achievement by a careful thinker (recent recepient of the SSE's Sewall Wright award), and it will likely change the way you think about how genes and environments interact through development to affect phenotypic expression. If you have ever been confused about ideas in evolutionary process and how phenotypes arise, this is a book you should read. West-Eberhard's treatment of the more-difficult ideas is comprehensive - with enough examples to appeal to the backgrounds of most readers. The book is full of wonderful details of animal behavior, plant biology, the social wasps West-Eberhard has watched her whole life, and much, much more. It will spark much new research - perhaps for decades to come. It will become a citation classic. She has taken on one of the more contentious of all modern debates. For that, for her exhaustive discussion, and for the power of her conclusions, she will be criticized and rediculed. Take my advice: buy the book, read it, think about what it says, and decide for yourself . I think West-Eberhard's achievement is an awesome contribution.

Darwin developed his theory of evolution without knowing much about the mechanisms of heredity. These mechanisms were rediscovered in the 1900's as part of the science of genetics. By the 1930's a school of evolutionary thinkers came to the realization that Darwin's theory could be further developed by recasting it in terms of population genetics. The resulting synthetic theory of evolution has ruled mainstream biology ever since. But genetics has not stood still in the meantime. The rise of molecular biology has made possible a new discipline, evo-devo which seeks to explain how the genes control development. Evo-devo has developed a new approach to evolution. While the synthetic theory tended to see evolution as a matter of the loss of old genes within a population or the fixation of new ones, evo-devo has found that large parts of the genome are conserved over vast periods of time and shared by widely divergent phyla. Evolution has produced diversity by modifying the mechanisms which control the expression of these ancient genes. New ideas are now required to explain how this kind of diversity evolves. West-Eberhard proposes that genetic control mechanisms can be exposed to selection by the phenotypic adaptation of organisms to new kinds of environmemt. This phenotypic adaptation ultimately drives evolution. The germ of this idea had been put forward by J. Baldwim more than one hundred years ago but neither Baldwin or anybody else knew about evo-devo and the idea had little influence. Now its time may have come.

For any evolutionary biologist interested in how evolutionary events are molded and modulated by phenotypic plasticity and developmental processes this book is a "must have". It is a huge, widesweeping review and synthesis of the problem of development and evolution. It will remain as the benchmark for the field for many years. No one can approach this subject without having read this book. In perspective it ranges from the molecular to the macroevolutionary, but always manages to maintain a highly readable style.

There seems to be a consensus in evolutionary biology that this is an important book representing a major advance in our understanding. However, most of the biologists saying this haven't read the book; or have, perhaps, skimmed a chapter or two. The reason for this is simple: this book is far too long, far too dense, and far too abstruse. There is a lot of potential here; rewritten as a 150-200 page book with a good editor, it could have been an excellent and influential book. At 640 pages of text with constant grammatical & spelling errors (Lamarck only has his "c" about half the time) and writing that is, even by academic standards, hopelessly tangled, this is bound to be only an excellent decoration for the academic bookshelf.

Nonetheless, for those willing to take the long slog through there really is a lot of value here. There are just so many more enjoyable ways to spend one's time...

For me, West-Eberhard's Developmental Plasticity and Evolution is the most far reaching integration of evolution, ecology and development since Darwin's Origin of Species. This is not merely a review of the literature, it is a book with a definite point of view. In the preface she writes: " The universal environmental responsiveness of organisms, along side genes, influences individual development and organic evolution, and this realization compels us to reexamine the major themes of evolutionary biology in a new light". Like The Origin of Species, this book is meticulous in bringing evidence to bear on each issue. Meticulous does not mean boring! The lucid prose is full of passionate intensity and you follow the author's thinking as you both grapple with each challenge. Along the way, we learn a lot of fascinating biology used as examples to bolster particular ideas.
Who should read this book? Anyone interested in understanding the forces at work in the origin and nature of biodiversity. Undergraduates and graduate students with few vested interests in maintaining narrow disciplinary approaches are the most likely to truly enlarge their world view from reading this work. Will you agree with everything in this large and courageous book? Probably not. Just as we are constantly examining Darwin's propositions, this book challenges us to defend and expand our current thinking. Understanding the interrelations of genes, developmental processes and ecology and their consequences for evolution is an ongoing task and this is the kind of book to shape the discourse in the emerging evo-eco-devo integration for at least a generation to come.

West-Eberhard has produced a 794 page tome that chokes the brain and deadens the senses. On the reverse cover, it asks a question about the picture on the cover, and refers to a chapter for the answer. As far as I can see, the question is never addressed.

This reveals two of the books problems. First, its grandiose aspirations, to be a new 'Modern Synthesis,' and to bring developmental biology into the fold, are never backed with a strength of data and arguments that equal her claims. Secondly, the book is a morass of arguments, constantly pointing to other parts of the book. I started drawing little circle around each time we were referred to another chapter, but I quickly stopped as my pages became tangled messes of circles.

The writing is murky at best, and the reader learns to treasure moments of lucidity, as they are long in coming. The structure often seems backwards, confusing, and generally awkward. This tome is in dire need of a biologically educated editor. Her tone is often confrontational and bullying towards other authors.

Technically speaking, her ideas within are vague, and while she lays out a clear path for phenotypic plasticity leading evolution, the reader quickly realizes her definitions of concepts like 'Phenotype' are so nebulous and removed from what any other average biologist uses that to argue against is to try and staple Jell-O to your roof. At times, she attempts to have things in two different ways - arguing phylogenetic inertia isn't a relevant or especially frequent, but also wanting traits to remain perfect and unexpressed for absurd periods of time.

The mathematical treatment of the subject in this book is non-existent. This is almost unforgivable, in a topic that clearly needs a mathematical treatment to establish its true importance in any given system beyond the examples given. Its testable predictions are rare in coming, often muddied in content, and frequently overlap with predictions made by alternate competing hypothesis. Those looking for a research programme had best look elsewhere. It definitely has not, and will not, sway any sceptics.

Its sole, redeeming quality is that it aggressively challenges the readers pre-existing notions of evolution, and forces the reader to reconsider long-held notions. But for those of us with limited time, a more succinct volume could accomplish the same introspection.

Dr Eberhard's volume offers a comprehensive & scholarly treatment of a difficult but timely subject. It is loaded with information on development and developmental plasticity I expect many ecologists, animal behaviorists, and evolutionary biologists will find very useful.---Kay Holekamp

This text is amazing. It takes a comparative approach in providing countless examples of developmental plasticity and its importance in the scope of evolutionary theory. It's truly a synthesis and the prime source for the long-awaited integration of development with evolution.

I have a PhD in biochemistry (meaning I can understand a reasonable amount of jargon) and hoped that with this book I'd be able to understand what modern developmental biology (in particular developmental genetics, "evo-devo", etc.) is about, but this book bored me to death. There is no continuum, no logical progression in the teaching. When you reach the end of a chapter you've forgotten what it was about. I admire the central concept and the work but, frankly, as a book it's completely missed. It is not a textbook, it is not a popularization book, it's a 600+pages small print dissertation. Who wants to read that ? Who has the time to go to the library and check the details of any of the hundreds of referenced articles (all of them are treated only superficially) ? Not students, not professional scientists (their time would be better spent reading review articles), not laypersons. Who then ?