Department of Integrative Biology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA.
Department of Anthropology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA.
Nat Ecol Evol. 2023 Oct;7(10):1729-1739. doi: 10.1038/s41559-023-02167-w. Epub 2023 Aug 31.
Macroevolutionary biologists have classically rejected the notion that higher-level patterns of divergence arise through microevolutionary processes acting within populations. For morphology, this consensus partly derives from the inability of quantitative genetics models to correctly predict the behaviour of evolutionary processes at the scale of millions of years. Developmental studies (evo-devo) have been proposed to reconcile micro- and macroevolution. However, there has been little progress in establishing a formal framework to apply evo-devo models of phenotypic diversification. Here we reframe this issue by asking whether using evo-devo models to quantify biological variation can improve the explanatory power of comparative models, thus helping us bridge the gap between micro- and macroevolution. We test this prediction by evaluating the evolution of primate lower molars in a comprehensive dataset densely sampled across living and extinct taxa. Our results suggest that biologically informed morphospaces alongside quantitative genetics models allow a seamless transition between the micro- and macroscales, whereas biologically uninformed spaces do not. We show that the adaptive landscape for primate teeth is corridor like, with changes in morphology within the corridor being nearly neutral. Overall, our framework provides a basis for integrating evo-devo into the modern synthesis, allowing an operational way to evaluate the ultimate causes of macroevolution.
宏观进化生物学家经典地拒绝了这样一种观点，即较高层次的分歧模式是通过在种群内部发生的微观进化过程产生的。对于形态学来说，这种共识部分源于定量遗传学模型无法正确预测数百万年尺度上进化过程的行为。发育研究（演化发育生物学）被提议用于调和微观进化和宏观进化。然而，在建立一个正式的框架来应用表型多样化的演化发育模型方面，几乎没有取得什么进展。在这里，我们通过询问使用演化发育模型来量化生物变异是否可以提高比较模型的解释力，从而帮助我们弥合微观进化和宏观进化之间的差距，来重新构建这个问题。我们通过评估在广泛的活化石分类中密集采样的灵长类动物下臼齿的演化来检验这一预测。我们的结果表明，生物信息形态空间与定量遗传学模型一起，可以在微观和宏观尺度之间实现无缝过渡，而生物信息不足的空间则不行。我们表明，灵长类牙齿的适应景观是走廊状的，走廊内的形态变化几乎是中性的。总的来说，我们的框架为将演化发育生物学纳入现代综合理论提供了一个基础，为评估宏观进化的终极原因提供了一种可行的方法。
