Competition-driven evolution of organismal complexity.
Non-uniform rates of morphological evolution and evolutionary increases in organismal complexity, captured in metaphors like "adaptive zones", "punctuated equilibrium" and "blunderbuss patterns", require more elaborate explanations than a simple gradual accumulation of...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
2019-10-01
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| Series: | PLoS Computational Biology |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007388 |
| Summary: | Non-uniform rates of morphological evolution and evolutionary increases in organismal complexity, captured in metaphors like "adaptive zones", "punctuated equilibrium" and "blunderbuss patterns", require more elaborate explanations than a simple gradual accumulation of mutations. Here we argue that non-uniform evolutionary increases in phenotypic complexity can be caused by a threshold-like response to growing ecological pressures resulting from evolutionary diversification at a given level of complexity. Acquisition of a new phenotypic feature allows an evolving species to escape this pressure but can typically be expected to carry significant physiological costs. Therefore, the ecological pressure should exceed a certain level to make such an acquisition evolutionarily successful. We present a detailed quantitative description of this process using a microevolutionary competition model as an example. The model exhibits sequential increases in phenotypic complexity driven by diversification at existing levels of complexity and a resulting increase in competitive pressure, which can push an evolving species over the barrier of physiological costs of new phenotypic features. |
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| ISSN: | 1553-734X 1553-7358 |