Reticulate Evolution Everywhere

Abstract

Reticulation is a recurring evolutionary pattern found in phylogenetic reconstructions of life. The pattern results from how species interact and evolve by mechanisms and processes including symbiosis; symbiogenesis; lateral gene transfer (that occurs via bacterial conjugation, transformation, transduction, Gene Transfer Agents, or the movements of transposons, retrotransposons, and other mobile genetic elements); hybridization or divergence with gene flow; and infectious heredity (induced either directly by bacteria, bacteriophages, viruses, prions, protozoa and fungi, or via vectors that transmit these pathogens). Research on reticulate evolution today takes on inter-and transdisciplinary proportions and is able to unite distinct research fields ranging from microbiology and molecular genetics to evolutionary biology and the biomedical sciences. This chapter summarizes the main principles of the diverse reticulate evolutionary mechanisms and situates them into the chapters that make up this volume.

Testing the “(Neo-)Darwinian” Principles against Reticulate Evolution: How Variation, Adaptation, Heredity and Fitness, Constraints and Affordances, Speciation, and Extinction Surpass Organisms and Species

“…Organisms belonging to all three domains of life are prone to become infected by viruses, bacteria, or other organisms. The role of infection in health and disease and its impact on evolution was first examined by Haldane [72], one of the founders of the Modern Synthesis, and later it was dubbed "infective heredity" by Zinder and Lederberg [70,73]. Although dependent upon mobile genetic elements, lateral gene transfer, and symbiosis, infective heredity is introduced here as a distinct type of reticulate evolution in order to emphasize the impact that ontological processes of immunology, health, and disease have on evolution by altering the survival chances and reproductive success of infected individuals.…”

From Identity to Uniqueness: The Emergence of Increasingly Higher Levels of Hierarchy in the Process of the Matter Evolution

“…Attraction in the biological systems takes the form of symbiosis. The very term “symbiosis” was proposed almost 150 years ago by Heinrich Anton de Bary [ 46 , 47 ]. Then, after a quarter of a century, Peter Kropotkin [ 48 ] came to the conclusion that the symbiosis in the form of “mutual aid” plays an essential role in the evolution of multicellular organisms.…”

Symbiosis, History of

“…By the midnineteenth century, used to designate group cooperation and communal group living that advances effects unobtainable by the individuals, which is why the whole becomes more than the sum of its individual parts First introduced in biology in bio-economic, systems theoretical and hierarchical approaches to life (see e.g., Corning, 2013Corning, , 2014 References: http://www.oed.com/; https://www.wiktionary.org/; http://www.etymonline. com/ (Carrapiço, 2015;Gontier, 2015; Social Darwinians thus focused on competition, and many symbiologists understood these theories as direct extensions of liberal thought into biology. Symbiosis scholars critiqued by emphasizing that the sociopolitical and biological realms display many instances of social and mutualistic behavior, which they equally understood as 'lawful.…”

“…Symbiosis became understood as an ontogenetic or developmental, adaptive behavioral response to nutritional problems brought forth by the scarcity of resources and the struggle for existence. Nonetheless, in the margins of standard, Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, the evolutionary significance of symbiosis would remain studied by scholars who investigated cytoplasmic inheritance (for a discussion see Sapp, 2003;Gontier, 2015a) as well as ecological interactions (for a discussion see Egerton, 2015).…”