10 posts · 12,173 views
One Man's Struggle Against Impermanence
John S. Wilkins
10 posts
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- January 7, 2012
- 06:12 PM
- 586 views
The difference between population concepts and “population thinking”
by John S. Wilkins in Evolving Thoughts
The late Ernst Mayr is remembered for many things, but a number of his historical and philosophical claims are unravelling. The very clever and perspicacious Rutgers geneticist, Jody Hey, has published a paper in the Quarterly Review of Biology on … Continue reading →... Read more »
Jody Hey. (2011) Regarding the confusion between the population concept and Mayr’s “population thinking”. Quarterly Review of Biology, 86(4), 253-264. info:/
- September 29, 2011
- 09:04 PM
- 888 views
Ecological speciation
by John S. Wilkins in Evolving Thoughts
A new paper in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology (link below) assesses the possibility of speciation by ecological differentiation in conjunction with geographical isolation. The interesting thing here is that it takes two views previously considered as antagonists and combines … Continue reading →... Read more »
Aguilée, R., Lambert, A., & Claessen, D. (2011) Ecological speciation in dynamic landscapes. Journal of Evolutionary Biology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2011.02392.x
- May 13, 2011
- 12:12 AM
- 1,174 views
Did humans lose dominance?
by John S. Wilkins in Evolving Thoughts
An extensive critical review has just been published online in advance of publication for Biology and Philosophy. The title is “Evolution and the loss of hierarchies: Dubreuil’s Human evolution and the origin of hierarchies: the state of nature” by Catherine … Continue reading →... Read more »
Driscoll, C. (2011) Evolution and the loss of hierarchies: Dubreuil’s “Human evolution and the origin of hierarchies: the state of nature”. Biology . DOI: 10.1007/s10539-011-9266-2
- June 8, 2009
- 04:00 AM
- 937 views
Another ID knockdown, by Sarkar
by John S. Wilkins in Evolving Thoughts
A review of a paper on intelligent design... Read more »
Sarkar, S. (2009) The science question in intelligent design. Synthese. DOI: 10.1007/s11229-009-9540-x
- December 15, 2008
- 12:00 AM
- 2,016 views
Tetrapods, species selection, and extinction
by John S. Wilkins in Evolving Thoughts
Reviews three Annual Reviews papers... Read more »
Michael I. Coates, Marcello Ruta, & Matt Friedman. (2008) Ever Since Owen: Changing Perspectives on the Early Evolution of Tetrapods. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 39(1), 571-592. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.38.091206.095546
David Jablonski. (2008) Species Selection: Theory and Data. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 39(1), 501-524. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.39.110707.173510
Andy Purvis. (2008) Phylogenetic Approaches to the Study of Extinction. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 39(1), 301-319. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-063008-102010
- December 12, 2008
- 10:24 PM
- 1,433 views
Some new work on speciation and species
by John S. Wilkins in Evolving Thoughts
There is a widespread tendency of biologists to overgeneralise from their study group of organisms to the whole of biology. Sometimes this is because the organisms are model organisms, like Drosophila (the "fruit flies" that have been used in genetics since the beginning).Other times it is because specialists tend to overestimate the generality of their results and domain. The recent trend to finding "speciation genes" is an example. For some time now various researchers like Chung-i Wu and his ........ Read more »
O. Mihola, Z. Trachtulec, C. Vlcek, J. C. Schimenti, & J. Forejt. (2008) A Mouse Speciation Gene Encodes a Meiotic Histone H3 Methyltransferase. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.1163601
N. Phadnis, & H. A. Orr. (2008) A Single Gene Causes Both Male Sterility and Segregation Distortion in Drosophila Hybrids. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.1163934
John Wilkins. (2007) The dimensions, modes and definitions of species and speciation. Biology , 22(2), 247-266. DOI: 10.1007/s10539-006-9043-9
- August 8, 2008
- 01:03 AM
- 1,486 views
New work on speciation
by John S. Wilkins in Evolving Thoughts
Just lately there's been a flurry of papers on speciation that I haven't had time to digest properly. Several of them seem to support "sympatric" or localised speciation based on selection for local resources with reproductive isolation a side effect of divergent selection. So here they are below the fold with abstracts and my comments...
Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
A Widmer, C Lexer, & S Cozzolino. (2008) Evolution of reproductive isolation in plants. Heredity. DOI: 10.1038/hdy.2008.69
S Otto, M R Servedio, & S L Nuismer. (2008) Frequency-dependent selection and the evolution of assortative mating. Genetics. DOI: 10.1534/genetics.107.084418
Guy Hoelzer, Rich Drewes, Jeffrey Meier, René Doursat, & Philip E Bourne. (2008) Isolation-by-Distance and Outbreeding Depression Are Sufficient to Drive Parapatric Speciation in the Absence of Environmental Influences. PLoS Computational Biology, 4(7). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000126
S Otto, M R Servedio, & S L Nuismer. (2008) Frequency-dependent selection and the evolution of assortative mating. Genetics. DOI: 10.1534/genetics.107.084418
W DOOLITTLE. (2008) Microbial Evolution: Stalking the Wild Bacterial Species. Current Biology, 18(13). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2008.05.029
- August 8, 2008
- 01:03 AM
- 639 views
New paper by Wilkins
by John S. Wilkins in Evolving Thoughts
Wilkins, J.S. (2008). The adaptive landscape of science. Biology & Philosophy DOI: 10.1007/s10539-008-9125-y
This is a paper returning to my roots - the evolutionary view of scientific theory change. My first paper, back in the Jurassic, was a rough and ready attempt to make sense of David Hull's view of science as a semantic conception of theories. In the light of problems such as suboptimality in evolution, many people decided that science could not be just an evolutionary (in the sense ........ Read more »
John Wilkins. (2008) The adaptive landscape of science. Biology . DOI: 10.1007/s10539-008-9125-y
- August 8, 2008
- 01:03 AM
- 1,541 views
Colbert, spiders and cohesion species
by John S. Wilkins in Evolving Thoughts
I was going to write a killer piece on the naming of a species of spider for Stephen Colbert, but that rat bastard Carl Zimmer, who I am convinced never actually sleeps, beat me to it. So instead I will ignore the layers of irony that the naming of a spider for a fictional conservative offers to semantic strip mining, and discuss the species concept that Jason Bond ("Bond. Jason Bond") and his collaborator Amy Stockman used to identify and discriminate these species. But first, here&#........ Read more »
Jason Bond, & Amy Stockman. (2008) An Integrative Method for Delimiting Cohesion Species: Finding the Population-Species Interface in a Group of Californian Trapdoor Spiders with Extreme Genetic Divergence and Geographic Structuring. Systematic Biology, 57(4), 628-646. DOI: 10.1080/10635150802302443
- August 8, 2008
- 01:03 AM
- 1,473 views
Other adaptive landscape papers
by John S. Wilkins in Evolving Thoughts
Having blown my own trumpet, I should mention that there are a few other articles in the same edition of Biology and Philosophy (which I hadn't seen until now) on Gavrilets' view of adaptive landscapes now on Online First: Massimo Pigliucci has a very nice historical summary of Sewall Wright's initial metaphor and ideas and how they changed (it hadn't occurred to me, but should have, that the landscape metaphor fails to deal with new mutations, which change the landscape its........ Read more »
Jonathan Kaplan. (2008) The end of the adaptive landscape metaphor?. Biology . DOI: 10.1007/s10539-008-9116-z
Massimo Pigliucci. (2008) Sewall Wright’s adaptive landscapes: 1932 vs. 1988. Biology . DOI: 10.1007/s10539-008-9124-z
Anya Plutynski. (2008) The rise and fall of the adaptive landscape?. Biology . DOI: 10.1007/s10539-008-9128-8
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