Oberprieler, Christoph (2025) Towards a Research Programme Aiming at Causes and Consequences of Reticulate Evolution. BIOLOGY-BASEL, 14 (11): 1601. ISSN 2079-7737
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Evolution is reticulate. Reticulation increases diversity and complexity on the different levels of the evolutionary hierarchy. In addition to the tendency for diversity and complexity to increase in unchecked evolutionary systems by ongoing divergence ('Zero-Force Evolutionary Law', 'Biology's First Law'), reticulate evolution, therefore, acts as a second mechanism for the establishment of evolutionary novelty and the rise in biodiversity and biocomplexity ('Biology's Second Law'). This provides the raw material for subsequent diversity-confining drift and selection processes. In order to fully appreciate reticulation processes as part of an updated paradigm of evolutionary biology, a research programme on the topic should encompass the identification of the fundamental evolutionary entities as vertices and the study of the relationships among these vertices as edges in the resulting network architectures. Additionally, along with surveys on the underlying determinants, this will lead to the study of emergent boundary conditions for reticulations and for the porosity of evolutionary entities. Finally, the programme should address the question whether there are equilibrium conditions between the complete fusion and complete isolation of evolutionary entities ('Goldilocks Zones') that foster reticulate evolution. As tools in this research programme, machine learning and modelling approaches, along with methods in the field of network reconstruction, transcriptomics, epigenetics, and karyology, are identified.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | HORIZONTAL GENE-TRANSFER; HOPEFUL MONSTERS; GENOME SIZE; HYBRIDIZATION; POLYPLOIDS; TREE; biological complexity; biological diversity; endosymbiosis; evolving systems; hybridisation; hybrid speciation; organisms; phylogenetics; symbiosis; systematics; theory of evolution |
| Subjects: | 500 Science > 580 Botanical sciences |
| Divisions: | Biology, Preclinical Medicine > Institut für Pflanzenwissenschaften > Group Plant Systematics and Evolution (Prof. Dr. Christoph Oberprieler) |
| Depositing User: | Dr. Gernot Deinzer |
| Date Deposited: | 23 Sep 2026 05:25 |
| Last Modified: | 23 Sep 2026 05:25 |
| URI: | https://pred.uni-regensburg.de/id/eprint/66365 |
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