References
Range Pinning and Madagascar:
Spatial Sorting:
Shine, R., Brown, G. P., & Phillips, B. L. (2011). An evolutionary process that assembles phenotypes through space rather than through time. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(14), 5708-5711.
Goel, N. (2021). Algebraic theorem of selection by spatial sorting. bioRxiv doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.09.20.461092
History of maximization approaches:
Grodwohl, J. B. (2017). “The Theory was Beautiful Indeed”: Rise, Fall and Circulation of Maximizing Methods in Population Genetics (1930–1980). Journal of the History of Biology, 50(3), 571-608.
Fisher interpeted as producing a maximization theorem:
Pro
Grafen, A. (2003). Fisher the evolutionary biologist. The Statistician 52, 319–329.
Gardner, A. (2009). Adaptation as organism design. Biology Letters, 5(6), 861-864.
Con
Edwards, A. W. F. (2014). RA Fisher’s gene‐centred view of evolution and the Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection. Biological Reviews, 89(1), 135-147.
Frank, Steven A. Wright’s adaptive landscape versus Fisher’s fundamental theorem. Oxford University Press, New York (in press). Available from http://arxiv. org/abs/1102.3709 v1, 2012.
Use of Price Equation to Generalize Hamilton’s rule:
Pro
Queller, D. C. (1992). A general model for kin selection. Evolution, 46(2), 376-380.
Gardner, A., West, S. A., & Wild, G. (2011). The genetical theory of kin selection. Journal of evolutionary biology, 24(5), 1020-1043.
Con
Nowak, M. A., McAvoy, A., Allen, B., & Wilson, E. O. (2017). The general form of Hamilton’s rule makes no predictions and cannot be tested empirically. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(22), 5665-5670.
van Veelen, M. (2020). The problem with the Price equation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 375(1797), 20190355.
Natural Reward:
Gilbert, O. M. (2019). Natural reward as the fundamental macroevolutionary force. arXiv preprint arXiv:1903.09567.
Gilbert, O. M. (2020). Natural reward drives the advancement of life. Rethinking Ecology, 5, 1.
Finding general predictive power in common processes:
Gilbert, O. M. (2015). Histocompatibility as adaptive response to discriminatory within-organism conflict: A historical model. The American Naturalist, 185(2), 228-242.
Gilbert, O. M. (2017). Association theory: a new framework for analyzing social evolution. bioRxiv, 197632.
Complex trait evolution:
Stanley, K. O., & Lehman, J. (2015). Why greatness cannot be planned: The myth of the objective. Springer.
Suzuki, T. K. (2017). On the origin of complex adaptive traits: progress since the Darwin versus Mivart debate. Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution, 328(4), 304-320.
Summary
In this episode, I speak with Dr. Nikunj Goel about about spatial sorting, which refers to the build up of dispersal morphs on expanding edges of populations. Dr. Goel is a postdoctoral researcher at UT Austin working with Tim Keitt. We begin with a discussion of Dr. Goel’s background in physics and math, how he got interested in biology, and his work in ecology. We then get into Dr. Goel’s views on biological theory, and his approach to using the Price equation to model spatial sorting. I ask Dr. Goel to share his perspective on the conceptual background of spatial sorting, including whether he views it as a type of natural selection, and his approach to modelling it. I then tell Dr. Goel that I think spatial sorting is significant because it is often involved with population expansion and invasion of new habitats. I also tell Dr. Goel about my own views on “general theory” in biology and the use of the Price equation in the field of social evolution. We also cover relevant history of evolutionary theory.
