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Complex Life Cycles and the Evolutionary Process

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Peter Godfrey-Smith
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Abstract

Problems raised by complex life cycles for standard summaries of evolutionary processes, and for concepts of individuality in biology, are described. I then outline a framework that can be used to compare life cycles. This framework treats reproduction as a combination of production and recurrence and organizes life cycles according to the distribution of steps in which multiplication, bottlenecks, and sex occur. I also discuss fitness and its measurement in complex life cycles and consider some phenomena that raise complications and difficulties for my framework.

Type
Complex Life Cycles and Reproduction
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 83 , Issue 5 , December 2016 , pp. 816 - 827
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I am grateful to all the participants in the PSA 2014 symposium on “Complex Life Cycles, Reproduction and Evolution,” and also to Jean Gayon, Ben Kerr, and Ron Planer for comments and correspondence.

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