Bourrat, Pierrick and Griffiths, Paul E. (2021) The idea of mismatch in evolutionary medicine. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Mismatch is a prominent concept in evolutionary medicine and a number of philosophers have published analyses of this concept. The word ‘mismatch’ has been used in a diversity of ways across a range of sciences, leading these authors to regard it as a vague concept in need of philosophical clarification. Here, in contrast, we concentrate on the use of mismatch in modelling and experimentation in evolutionary medicine. This reveals a rigorous theory of mismatch within which the term ‘mismatch’ is indeed used in several ways, not because it is ill-defined but because different forms of mismatch are.distinguished within the theory. Contemporary evolutionary medicine has unified the idea of ‘evolutionary mismatch’, derived from the older idea of ‘adaptive lag’ in evolution, with ideas about mismatch in development and physiology derived from the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) paradigm. A number of publications in evolutionary medicine have tried to make this theoretical framework explicit. We build on these to present the theory in as simple and general a form as possible. We introduce terminology, largely drawn from the existing literature, to distinguish the different forms of mismatch. This integrative theory of mismatch captures how organisms track environments across space and time on multiple scales in order to maintain an adaptive match to the environment, and how failures of adaptive tracking lead to disease. Mismatch is a productive organising concept within this theory which helps researchers articulate how physiology, development and evolution interact with one another and with environmental change to explain health outcomes.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Bourrat, Pierrick p.bourrat@gmail.com 0000-0002-4465-6015 Griffiths, Paul E. paul.griffiths@sydney.edu.au 0000-0002-8657-6873
Keywords:	mismatch, developmental mismatch, evolutionary mismatch, evolutionary medicine, environment of evolutionary adaptedness, predictive adaptive response
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Biology > Developmental Biology Specific Sciences > Biology > Evolutionary Theory Specific Sciences > Medicine > Health and Disease
Depositing User:	Professor Paul Edmund Griffiths
Date Deposited:	23 Jul 2021 13:58
Last Modified:	23 Jul 2021 13:58
Item ID:	19349
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Biology > Developmental Biology Specific Sciences > Biology > Evolutionary Theory Specific Sciences > Medicine > Health and Disease
Date:	16 July 2021
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/19349

Available Versions of this Item

• The idea of mismatch in evolutionary medicine. (deposited 25 Apr 2021 03:51)
  • The idea of mismatch in evolutionary medicine. (deposited 18 Jul 2021 20:46)
    • The idea of mismatch in evolutionary medicine. (deposited 23 Jul 2021 13:58) [Currently Displayed]

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