Kjetil Lysne Voje, a fellow at the 2019/20 CAS project "Evolvability: A New and Unifying Concept in Evolutionary Biology?", was awarded the prestigious ERC Starting Grant.
2019/2020
Evolvability
Evolvability
A New and Unifying Concept in Evolutionary Biology?
Natural Sciences
Principal investigators
Abstract
Evolution by natural selection requires that organisms are evolvable. This makes evolvability, the propensity to evolve, a fundamental concept in evolutionary theory. Yet, for most of the history of evolutionary biology, evolvability was taken for granted and was not itself a subject of study. Since about 1990, however, there has been a flood of research on evolvability from several perspectives. Different interpretations and approaches, however, question the utility of the concept. In this project, we took stock of the past 30 years of research to study evolvability as one of the unifying concepts of the "extended synthesis" of evolutionary biology. We gathered researchers from different disciplines that have been instrumental in the study of evolvability and synthesize what we have learned with a special focus on the historical and philosophical context that influenced the emergence of the concept. Our work synthesized in several publications and two coming books, highlights the progresses that the evolvability concept allowed in several fields of evolutionary biology and helps us identifying new avenues of research.
Fellows
Gene Hunt
Professor
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
Year at CAS
Arnaud Le Rouzic
Researcher
French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)
Year at CAS
Lee Hsiang Liow
Professor
University of Oslo (UiO)
News
Jacqueline Sztepanacz has been awarded the prestigious prize for her “accomplishments and future promise” as an outstanding young evolutionary biologist.