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Evolutionary Novelty and the Evo-Devo Synthesis: Field Notes

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Abstract

Accounting for the evolutionary origins of morphological novelty is one of the core challenges of contemporary evolutionary biology. A successful explanatory framework requires the integration of different biological disciplines, but the relationships between developmental biology and standard evolutionary biology remain contested. There is also disagreement about how to define the concept of evolutionary novelty. These issues were the subjects of a workshop held in November 2009 at the University of Alberta. We report on the discussion and results of this workshop, addressing questions about (i) how to define evolutionary novelty and understand its significance, (ii) how to interpret evolutionary developmental biology as a synthesis and its relation to neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, and (iii) how to integrate disparate biological approaches in general.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the participants of the workshop ‘Integrating Different Biological Approaches’ (November 13–15, 2009, University of Alberta) for their discussion contributions, which formed the basis of this paper. Ingo Brigandt’s work is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Standard Research Grant 410-2008-0400). Alan Love’s work is supported by the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship at the University of Minnesota.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta, 2-40 Assiniboia Hall, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E7, Canada

    Ingo Brigandt

  2. Department of Philosophy, Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Minnesota, 831 Heller Hall, 271 19th Ave. S, Minneapolis, MN, 55455-0310, USA

    Alan C. Love

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  1. Ingo Brigandt
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  2. Alan C. Love
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Correspondence to Ingo Brigandt.

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Brigandt, I., Love, A.C. Evolutionary Novelty and the Evo-Devo Synthesis: Field Notes. Evol Biol 37, 93–99 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11692-010-9083-6

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