ArticleEvolution; international journal of organic evolution2022
Biological adaptation in light of the Lewontin-Williams (a)symmetry.
Article in Evolution; international journal of organic evolution, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Neo-Darwinism characterizes biological adaptation as a one-sided process, in which organisms adapt to their environment but not vice versa. This asymmetric relationship-here called Williams' asymmetry-is called into question by Niche Construction Theory, which emphasizes that organisms and their environments often mutually affect each other. Here, we clarify that Williams' asymmetry is specifically concerned with (quasi)-directed modifications toward phenotypes that increase individual fitness. This directedness-which drives the adaptive fit between organism and environment-entails far more than the mere presence of cause-effect relationships. We argue that difficulties with invoking fitness as the guiding principle of adaptive evolution are resolved with an appropriate definition of fitness and that objections against Williams' asymmetry reflect confusions about the nature of biological adaptation.
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.