ArticleFrontiers in ecology and evolution2023
Natural selection versus neutral mutation in the evolution of subterranean life: A false dichotomy?
Article in Frontiers in ecology and evolution, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Loss, persistence and reversal of phenotypic traits.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Convergent evolution of albinism in cave animals is driven by shared mechanisms and adaptive advantages.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Genetic bias in repeated evolution of pigment loss in cave populations of the Asellus aquaticus species complex.Journal of experimental zoology. Part B, Molecular and developmental evolution · 2024Article
- From darkness to discovery: evolutionary, adaptive, and translational genetic insights from cavefish.Trends in genetics : TIG · 2024Review
- Trait Loss in Evolution: What Cavefish Have Taught Us about Mechanisms Underlying Eye Regression.Integrative and comparative biology · 2023Review
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3 authors.
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Abstract
Throughout the evolutionary tree, there are gains and losses of morphological features, physiological processes, and behavioral patterns. Losses are perhaps nowhere so prominent as for subterranean organisms, which typically show reductions or losses of eyes and pigment. These losses seem easy to explain without recourse to natural selection. Its most modern form is the accumulation of selectively neutral, structurally reducing mutations. Selectionist explanations include direct selection, often involving metabolic efficiency in resource poor subterranean environments, and pleiotropy, where genes affecting eyes and pigment have other effects, such as increasing extra-optic sensory structures. This dichotomy echoes the debate in evolutionary biology in general about the sufficiency of natural selection as an explanation of evolution, e.g., Kimura's neutral mutation theory. Tests of the two hypotheses have largely been one-sided, with data supporting that one or the other processes is occurring. While these tests have utilized a variety of subterranean organisms, the Mexican cavefish,
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