Abstract
Evolution by natural selection requires that organisms are evolvable. This makes evolvability, the propensity to evolve, a fundamental concept in evolutionary theory. Yet, for most of the history of evolutionary biology, evolvability was taken for granted and not itself a subject of study. Since about 1990, however, there has been a flood of research on evolvability from several perspectives, but the different interpretations and approaches that have emerged from molecular, developmental and evolutionary biology pose a challenge.
In this CAS project, we will evaluate the past 25 years of research in order to understand evolvability as one of the unifying concepts of the "extended synthesis" of evolutionary theory. We will gather researchers from different disciplines that have been instrumental in the study of evolvability to synthesize what we have learned with a special focus on the historical and philosophical context that influenced the emergence of the concept. Our goal is to unify the approaches of different research fields into a synthetic multidisciplinary research program on the potential for evolution.
Fellows
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Armbruster, W. Scott
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Basanta, Silvia
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Bourg, Salomé
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Brigandt, Ingo
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Bråte, Jon
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Grabowski, Mark
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Houle, David
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Hunt, Gene
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Le Rouzic, Arnaud
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Liow, Lee Hsiang
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Love, Alan
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Lynch, Michael
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Morrissey, Michael
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Nuño de la Rosa, Laura
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Opedal, Øystein
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Pavlicev, Mihaela
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Payne, Joshua L.
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Porto, Arthur
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Sztepanacz, Jacqueline
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Tsuboi, Masahito
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Villegas, Cristina
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Voje, Kjetil
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Wagner, Gunter
Previous events
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26 Feb 202000:00 - 13:00Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) Centre for Advanced Study (CAS)
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20 Nov 201918:00 - 20:00Litteraturhuset Litteraturhuset
News
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Awarded ERC Starting Grant: ‘I developed as a researcher at CAS’
04.09.2020 -
CAS Fellow awarded the Dobzhansky Prize: ´I am absolutely thrilled´
24.04.2020 -
Female orgasm: an evolutionary emancipation of women’s sexuality?
13.11.2019 -
Meet the project: What are the preconditions for evolution?
03.10.2019