Eco-Evo-Devo: developmental symbiosis and developmental plasticity as evolutionary agents

Abstract

The integration of research from developmental biology and ecology into evolutionary theory has given rise to a relatively new field, ecological evolutionary developmental biology (Eco-Evo-Devo). This field integrates and organizes concepts such as developmental symbiosis, developmental plasticity, genetic accommodation, extragenic inheritance and niche construction. This Review highlights the roles that developmental symbiosis and developmental plasticity have in evolution. Developmental symbiosis can generate particular organs, can produce selectable genetic variation for the entire animal, can provide mechanisms for reproductive isolation, and may have facilitated evolutionary transitions. Developmental plasticity is crucial for generating novel phenotypes, facilitating evolutionary transitions and altered ecosystem dynamics, and promoting adaptive variation through genetic accommodation and niche construction. In emphasizing such non-genomic mechanisms of selectable and heritable variation, Eco-Evo-Devo presents a new layer of evolutionary synthesis.

The Emerging Theoretical Framework of Life Course Health Development

“…This work has also gone beyond examining fetal and early childhood origins to explore the developmental origins of health and disease more broadly and has generated various conceptual models to analyze and synthesize results (Schlotz and Phillips 2009;Gluckman et al 2010;Entringer et al 2012). A new generation of recent epigenetic studies have begun to provide a stronger biological and theoretical basis for understanding how developmental plasticity is manifested, how gene expression may be modified in response to environmental cues, and how biological and behavioral traits can be perpetuated across multiple generations (Hochberg et al 2010;Gluckman 2014;Thayer and Kuzawa 2011;Lillycrop and Burdge 2012;Gilbert et al 2015;Cunliffe 2015).…”

Healing Dysfunctional Identity: Bridging Mind-Body Intervention to Brain Systems

“…Emerging biological science suggests that life on Earth as a whole is maintained in a collective ecological homeostasis to which all organisms and environments contribute, and no organism can self-perpetuate and survive as a closed system, depending on nothing but its own genome [1]. In this symbiotic view of life, every organism is ever-changing and always dependant on other organisms [2].…”

‘Biogeneric’ developmental processes: drivers of major transitions in animal evolution

“…Subsequent evolutionary steps in the relevant lineages may thus be decoupled from the commonly assumed gradual selection for adaptive advantage. Instead, previously nonexistent ecological niches may have simultaneously arisen with the abrupt appearance of new biological entities [96], generating new ways of life along with the novel phenotypes.…”