ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2017
Nascent life cycles and the emergence of higher-level individuality.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed.
- The limits of information in precise regulation of early multicellular life cycles.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- A New Classification Framework to Understand Evolutionary Transitions in Individuality.BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2026Review
- Evolutionary dynamics of nascent multicellular lineages.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Adaptive evolutionary trajectories in complexity: Transitions between unicellularity and facultative differentiated multicellularity.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Stability of ecologically scaffolded traits during evolutionary transitions in individuality.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Group-selection via aggregative propagule-formation enables cooperative multicellularity in an individual based, spatial model.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Article
- Biological Robots: Perspectives on an Emerging Interdisciplinary Field.Soft robotics · 2023Article
- Alternating selection for dispersal and multicellularity favors regulated life cycles.Current biology : CB · 2023Article
- Minor variations in multicellular life cycles have major effects on adaptation.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Varied solutions to multicellularity: The biophysical and evolutionary consequences of diverse intercellular bonds.Biophysics reviews · 2022Review
- Networks of reliable reputations and cooperation: a review.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
- The Consequences of Budding versus Binary Fission on Adaptation and Aging in Primitive Multicellularity.Genes · 2021Article
- Aggregative cycles evolve as a solution to conflicts in social investment.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
- Article
- Multilevel selection as Bayesian inference, major transitions in individuality as structure learning.Royal Society open science · 2019Article
- Evolution of altruistic cooperation among nascent multicellular organisms.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2019Article
- Trait heritability in major transitions.BMC biology · 2018Article
- The origin of heredity in protocells.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Article
- Cooperation and cheating as innovation: insights from cellular societies.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Evolutionary transitions in individuality (ETIs) occur when formerly autonomous organisms evolve to become parts of a new, 'higher-level' organism. One of the first major hurdles that must be overcome during an ETI is the emergence of Darwinian evolvability in the higher-level entity (e.g. a multicellular group), and the loss of Darwinian autonomy in the lower-level units (e.g. individual cells). Here, we examine how simple higher-level life cycles are a key innovation during an ETI, allowing this transfer of fitness to occur 'for free'. Specifically, we show how novel life cycles can arise and lead to the origin of higher-level individuals by (i) mitigating conflicts between levels of selection, (ii) engendering the expression of heritable higher-level traits and (iii) allowing selection to efficiently act on these emergent higher-level traits. Further, we compute how canonical early life cycles vary in their ability to fix beneficial mutations via mathematical modelling. Life cycles that lack a persistent lower-level stage and develop clonally are far more likely to fix 'ratcheting' mutations that limit evolutionary reversion to the pre-ETI state. By stabilizing the fragile first steps of an evolutionary transition in individuality, nascent higher-level life cycles may play a crucial role in the origin of complex life.This article is part of the themed issue 'Process and pattern in innovations from cells to societies'.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.