Other adaptive landscape papers 8 Aug 2008 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 itself (although I did say something like this in my 1998 paper). Anya Plutinski discusses the iconography of Wright’s initial diagrams and how the metaphor has developed into a full model. And Jon Kaplan, who started me thinking about this some time back now, argues, rightly I believe, that it is time to stop thinking in terms of “picture” metaphors, and start dealing with the complex math that high dimensionality requires. I vaguely remember there was another paper coming, but if it turns up I will add it to this post. Kaplan, J. (2008). The end of the adaptive landscape metaphor?.Biology & Philosophy. DOI: 10.1007/s10539-008-9116-zPigliucci, M. (2008). Sewall Wright’s adaptive landscapes: 1932 vs. 1988. Biology & Philosophy. DOI: 10.1007/s10539-008-9124-zPlutynski, A. (2008). The rise and fall of the adaptive landscape?. Biology & Philosophy. DOI: 10.1007/s10539-008-9128-8 Evolution General Science History Species and systematics
Evolution Darwin, Romanes and Bateson on speciation 1 May 2010 The ever-productive Donald Forsdyke, who I quoted in the previous post, has a new paper up on the origins of reproductive isolation, and theories of speciation. Proving that no good idea is ever entirely novel, it turns out some of my ideas in this paper are prefigured here. At least,… Read More
Evolution Sunday sermon: on cultural isolation 22 Dec 2007 Okay, so the Eighth Day Inventism calendar as rolled around to coincide our Holy day with one of yours. We Inventists are open minded people and often try to reach out to you heathen irreligious puppy grinding moral monsters. Because that’s what you are, you know, if you don’t exactly… Read More
General Science The F-word 3 Apr 2008 Idiots and the ignorant should not speak on matters they do not understand. As I am both, I want to make some vague and ultimately useless comments about Framing, yet again. This has been motivated by Chris Mooney’s admirable attempts to get to the heart of the matter: here, here… Read More
See also Skipper, Robert A., “The Heuristic Role of Sewall Wright’s 1932 Adaptive Landscape Diagram”, Philosophy of Science 71 (2004): 1176-1188. http://asweb.artsci.uc.edu/philosophy/faculty/skipper_2004b.pdf
Just wondering: Did Wright specify that better-adapted creatures inhabited peaks in fitness landscapes? Seems to me this helps promote a slightly misleading “climbing” or “progress” metaphor. Consider a creature such as the panda, adapted for minimizing energy output w.r.t. energy input, and just barely successful at it. But though the panda’s “lifestyle” is a stark example, every form of life needs to do the same to survive and reproduce. Maybe a more appropriate metaphor than fitness peak would be an energy valley or well, something like electron orbits in quantum mechanics.
I can’t get Jon Kaplan’s paper, but if he’s talking about getting rid of the current crop of evolution metaphors, count me in. It’s not that the current crop are inaccurate, they are plain wrong. I’ve never understood why there are peaks at all in an adaptive landscape. Adaptaion is a restrictive excercise, the more adapted you become, the more restricted are your options with regard to the adaptive landscape. There should be adaptive pits, not peaks. Also, the the lawn/molehill/ladder/tree metaphors are woeful. We need a more three-dimentional model, like ink being injected into an aquarium (at least that has an x, y and z axis, none of which are associated with “higher”, “upward”, or “advanced”. It’s time to do a Washington to the cherry tree of life!
I can’t get Jon Kaplan’s paper, but if he’s talking about getting rid of the current crop of evolution metaphors, count me in. It’s not that the current crop are inaccurate, they are plain wrong. I’ve never understood why there are peaks at all in an adaptive landscape. Adaptaion is a restrictive excercise, the more adapted you become, the more restricted are your options with regard to the adaptive landscape. There should be adaptive pits, not peaks. Also, the the lawn/molehill/ladder/tree metaphors are woeful. We need a more three-dimentional model, like ink being injected into an aquarium (at least that has an x, y and z axis, none of which are associated with “higher”, “upward”, or “advanced”. It’s time to do a Washington to the cherry tree of life!
I’m surprised that you’re a fan of the adaptive landscape type talk, John… I dunno. I’m not big on Gavrilets (don’t tell him though, cuz I’m applying for grad school at UTK and he is the only person there who I would want to work for
Hrm, it screwed up my comment. Oh well. I just said that adaptive landscapes can be somewhat misleading, and that I was joking about Gavrilets. I think that his stochastic models are probably the best way to go about understanding some of the complex dynamics that will happen during speciation. My personal favorite work, though, is Orr and Turelli 2001 on the stochastic accumulation of Dobzhanksy-Muller Incompatabilities.