ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2015
Toward major evolutionary transitions theory 2.0.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 135 papers.
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135 citing papers in PubMed.
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- Evolvable AI: Threats of a new major transition in evolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Tracing Genetic Images Formed During Evolution.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
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- A smartphone analogy to explore the origin of animals.The EMBO journal · 2026Review
- The selfish ribosome.ArXiv · 2026Article
- The key role of cheaters in the persistence of cooperation.BMC biology · 2026Article
- Exo-Geoscience Perspectives Beyond Habitability.Space science reviews · 2026Review
- Intracellular competition shapes plasmid population dynamics.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- Towards Pragmatist Thermodynamics: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Entropy and Sustainability.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Early transitions in the evolution of cognition.History and philosophy of the life sciences · 2025Article
- Translating Research on Evolutionary Transitions Into the Teaching of Hierarchical Complexity in University Biology Courses.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Bifurcations and phase transitions in the origins of life.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Top-Down Coercive Mechanisms and the Major Transitions in Evolution.BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2025Review
- The hard steps model and whole Earth-system transitions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Strengthen or Weaken: Evolutionary Directions of Cross-Feeding After Formation.Environmental microbiology reports · 2025Review
- A reassessment of the "hard-steps" model for the evolution of intelligent life.Science advances · 2025Review
75 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Abstract
The impressive body of work on the major evolutionary transitions in the last 20 y calls for a reconstruction of the theory although a 2D account (evolution of informational systems and transitions in individuality) remains. Significant advances include the concept of fraternal and egalitarian transitions (lower-level units like and unlike, respectively). Multilevel selection, first without, then with, the collectives in focus is an important explanatory mechanism. Transitions are decomposed into phases of origin, maintenance, and transformation (i.e., further evolution) of the higher level units, which helps reduce the number of transitions in the revised list by two so that it is less top-heavy. After the transition, units show strong cooperation and very limited realized conflict. The origins of cells, the emergence of the genetic code and translation, the evolution of the eukaryotic cell, multicellularity, and the origin of human groups with language are reconsidered in some detail in the light of new data and considerations. Arguments are given why sex is not in the revised list as a separate transition. Some of the transitions can be recursive (e.g., plastids, multicellularity) or limited (transitions that share the usual features of major transitions without a massive phylogenetic impact, such as the micro- and macronuclei in ciliates). During transitions, new units of reproduction emerge, and establishment of such units requires high fidelity of reproduction (as opposed to mere replication).
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