What does genetic selection miss? Considering the causal role of behavior in evolution



Document title: What does genetic selection miss? Considering the causal role of behavior in evolution
Journal: Ludus vitalis
Database: CLASE
System number: 000365477
ISSN: 1133-5165
Authors: 1
Institutions: 1Fundación Gustavo Bueno, Oviedo. España
Year:
Volumen: 20
Number: 37
Pages: 127-135
Country: México
Language: Inglés
Document type: Artículo
Approach: Teórico, crítico
English abstract While the Darwinian original concept of natural selection primarily includes the central role that the behavior of individual organisms may play as an active agent in the process of biological evolution, the architects of the Modern Synthesis tended to focus primarily on genetic heritance in order to explain evolutionary changes of populations. I shall argue that in doing so there is something important that evolutionary biology fails to grasp: the behavior of the organisms that need to act in their ecological environment if copies of their genes are to be transmitted. The concept of behavior helps to understand the way evolution works in the wild. Finally, examples are provided as to how ethology offers some enlightening insights that help reinterpret, in a way that does not imply a metaphysical hypostatization of the idea of nature, much of the current debate in relation to the very concept of natural selection as real force acting in the outside world
Disciplines: Biología
Keyword: Genética,
Evolución y filogenia,
Selección natural,
Selección artificial,
Comportamiento,
Teoría sintética,
Efecto Baldwin
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