Developmental Plasticity and Evolution (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "How does developmental plasticity fit within a genetic theory of evolution?..." (more)
Key Phrases: modular traits, phenotypic accommodation, phenotypic recombination, Maynard Smith, Cocos Island, Van Valen (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...a milestone of epic proportion...an intellectual blitzkrieg...one of the best books I have seen in 20 years." -- Evolution and Development vol. 6 (1) 2003

"...forceful volume..an impressive repertoire of examples and strong imaginative lyrics, it demands a careful examination with an open mind." -- Science, 8 August 2003

"...this volume has the potential to be momentous in the development of our ideas on phenotypic evolution." -- Quarterly Review of Biology, December, 2003

"It behooves anyone interested in understanding the mechanisms behind large-scale patterns of evolution to grapple with this book." -- Bioscience, January 2004

Developmental Plasticity and Evolution...to receive the RR Hawkins Award for the Outstanding Professional, Reference or Scholarly Work of 2003. -- Press Release, American Association of Publichers, February 12, 2004

Review

"For the past century, evolutionary biology has focused almost exclusively on the ways in which genes and traits are propagated or lost, and has had surprisingly little to say about how new traits originate. In this masterful book, West-Eberhard provides a detailed explanation of how the origins of novelty can be understood in the light of recent insights from development, physiology, and behavior, This is a book of immense scope, full of interesting and exciting biology, in which West-Eberhard shows that the origins of novelty are both diverse and infinitely more interesting than what can be provided by random mutation. It will cause many to see evolution with completely new eyes and may prove to be the most important and insightful book about evolution since The Origin of the Species." -Fred Nijhout, Duke University
"This is a brilliant new synthesis of evolutionary biology, full of novel and convincing arguments and important lessons for workers in a great diversity of biological fields. I think this book will be a classic that people will be quoting decades from now." --George C. Williams, SUNY Stony Brook
"This book does not propose a radical departure from current evolutionary theory; rather it is a truly novel synthesis of evolutionary and developmental biology that is sure to profoundly affect the way biologists view the natural world. A must-read for any serious student of evolution and a must-have for any biological literature collection."--Choice

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 916 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1 edition (March 13, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195122348
• ISBN-13: 978-0195122343
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #4,251,209 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A vital contribution to evolutionary theory, June 17, 2004

By	Michal Polak (Cincinnati, OH USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars jump starting a revolutiion, January 3, 2006

By	Charles E. Nydorf (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Developmental Plasticity and Evolution (Paperback)

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.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A milestone in the study of phenotypic plasticity, July 8, 2004

By	Derek Roff (Riverside, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Developmental Plasticity and Evolution (Paperback)

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.