Veigl, Sophie Juliane and Suárez, Javier and Stencel, Adrian (2022) Rethinking Hereditary Relations: The Reconstitutor as the Evolutionary Unit of Heredity. [Preprint]
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Abstract
This paper introduces the reconstitutor as a comprehensive unit of heredity within the context of evolutionary research. A reconstitutor is the structure resulting from a set of relationships between different elements or processes that are actively involved in the recreation of a specific phenotypic variant in each generation regardless of the biomolecular basis of the elements or whether they stand in a continuous line of ancestry. Firstly, we justify the necessity of introducing the reconstitutor by showing the limitations of other evolutionary conceptions of the unit of heredity, such as the replicator, the reproducer, and the Darwinian individual. We argue that these conceptions are based on the requirement of lineage formation (Stability of Lineages), which we argue to be unnecessary for the existence of evolutionary heredity. In the second part, we introduce the reconstitutor, which we base on the concept of Stability of Traits, and illustrate how it covers cases of hereditary phenomena (small RNAs, microbiota) not covered by the previous accounts. Secondly, we illustrate how the reconstitutor could serve as a platform to rethink ecological inheritance and other forms of inheritance that have been recently introduced under the song/singer model of evolution.
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Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||||||||
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Keywords: | biological individuality; microbiome; holobiont; regulatory RNAs; epigenetics; niche construction; interactor; units of selection; misplaced concreteness; song/singer model | ||||||||||||
Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Biology Specific Sciences > Biology > Developmental Biology Specific Sciences > Biology > Evolutionary Theory Specific Sciences > Biology > Molecular Biology/Genetics |
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Depositing User: | Dr Javier Suárez | ||||||||||||
Date Deposited: | 07 Jul 2022 20:01 | ||||||||||||
Last Modified: | 07 Jul 2022 20:01 | ||||||||||||
Item ID: | 20838 | ||||||||||||
Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Biology Specific Sciences > Biology > Developmental Biology Specific Sciences > Biology > Evolutionary Theory Specific Sciences > Biology > Molecular Biology/Genetics |
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Date: | 2022 | ||||||||||||
URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/20838 |
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