ReviewEvolutionary biology2018
On Reciprocal Causation in the Evolutionary Process.
Review in Evolutionary biology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Valuing Behavioral By-Products: Evolutionary Significance of Neutrally Drifting and Exaptive Cultures in Primates.American journal of primatology · 2026Review
- Sexual Antagonism and Sex Determination in Three Syngnathid Species Alongside a Male Pregnancy Gradient.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Quantum Leaps in Human Biocultural Evolution and the Relationship to Cranial Capacity.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Nine Levels of Explanation : A Proposed Expansion of Tinbergen's Four-Level Framework for Understanding the Causes of Behavior.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2021Article
- A neglected conceptual problem regarding phenotypic plasticity's role in adaptive evolution: The importance of genetic covariance and social drive.Evolution letters · 2021Article
- Resolution of Complex Issues in Genome Regulation and Cancer Requires Non-Linear and Network-Based Thermodynamics.International journal of molecular sciences · 2019Review
- A way forward with eco evo devo: an extended theory of resource polymorphism with postglacial fishes as model systems.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2019Review
- How frequency-dependent selection affects population fitness, maladaptation and evolutionary rescue.Evolutionary applications · 2019Review
- O Organism, Where Art Thou? Old and New Challenges for Organism-Centered Biology.Journal of the history of biology · 2019Article
- Approximate Bayesian estimation of coevolutionary arms races.PLoS computational biology · 2019Article
- Genomics of Developmental Plasticity in Animals.Frontiers in genetics · 2019Review
- The emerging structure of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis: where does Evo-Devo fit in?Theory in biosciences = Theorie in den Biowissenschaften · 2018Article
- Why we don't want another "Synthesis".Biology direct · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
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Abstract
Recent calls for a revision of standard evolutionary theory (SET) are based partly on arguments about the reciprocal causation. Reciprocal causation means that cause-effect relationships are bi-directional, as a cause could later become an effect and vice versa. Such dynamic cause-effect relationships raise questions about the distinction between proximate and ultimate causes, as originally formulated by Ernst Mayr. They have also motivated some biologists and philosophers to argue for an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES). The EES will supposedly expand the scope of the Modern Synthesis (MS) and SET, which has been characterized as gene-centred, relying primarily on natural selection and largely neglecting reciprocal causation. Here, I critically examine these claims, with a special focus on the last conjecture. I conclude that reciprocal causation has long been recognized as important by naturalists, ecologists and evolutionary biologists working in the in the MS tradition, although it it could be explored even further. Numerous empirical examples of reciprocal causation in the form of positive and negative feedback are now well known from both natural and laboratory systems. Reciprocal causation have also been explicitly incorporated in mathematical models of coevolutionary arms races, frequency-dependent selection, eco-evolutionary dynamics and sexual selection. Such dynamic feedback were already recognized by Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin in their bok
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