Cartoon showing the three types of mechanisms underlying evolvability (IMAGE)
Caption
The way that mechanisms and organismal features affect evolvability can be classified into three categories. Each one contributes to evolvability in a different way. This can be compared with the process of baking a cake: the end result depends on several fundamentally different aspects – the number of ingredients, the quality of ingredients, and the baking process. We suggest that evolvability is analogously affected by three different classes of determinants: those providing variation (‘the amount of sugar’), those shaping the effect of variation on fitness (‘the type of sugar’), and those shaping the selection process (‘the baking process').
Credit
Trends in Evolution and Ecology
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License
CC BY-SA