Punctuated Regulation as an Evolutionary Mechanism

Abstract

Pivoting on the elegant work of Casanova and Konkel (2020), we adapt models based on the asymptotic limit theorems of information and control theories to the study of punctuated regulation in evolutionary punctuated equilibrium, carrying the basic idea well beyond genetic heritage mechanisms. A particular focus is on the role that ‘noise’ and environmental pressures play driving phase transitions in a temperature analog associated with the bandwidth necessary for proper function of central regulatory systems. The resulting treatment expands, but remains consonant with, the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, modulo an understanding of the many roles nonergodic information sources play at and across the varied scales and levels organization of the living state.

We...suggest [for evolutionary process]... that ancient regulatory programs that have been more or less modified continue to be utilized. As development progresses from stage to stage, progressively less ancient and phylogenetically more restricted genomic regulatory patterns would come into play.

— Britten and Davidson ( 1971 ) Since the morphological features of an animal are the product of its developmental process, and since the developmental process in each animal is encoded in its species-specific regulatory genome, then change in animal form during evolution is the consequence of change in genomic regulatory programs for development.

— Davidson ( 2006 )