“Unlike history, though, evolution has the deterministic force of natural selection, but that determinism is always in tension with the chanciness. Historical outcomes are contingent on long chains of events loaded with tiny little details,” said Zachary Blount, senior research associate at Michigan State and a visiting assistant professor of biology at Kenyon, and lead author of the review. “How history plays out isn’t really predictable. In doing so, they have reached different conclusions about the interplay between randomness of mutations, chance historical events, and directionality imparted by natural selection. Yet since the publication of “Wonderful Life”, many evolutionary biologists have taken up this challenge and conducted their own versions of Gould’s experiment, albeit on smaller scales. “Replay the tape a million times … and I doubt that anything like Homo sapiens would ever evolve again,” Gould mused, noting that being able to “replay the tape” and give history a do-over would be impossible. The question of evolution’s predictability was notably raised by the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, who advocated the view that evolution is contingent and unrepeatable in his 1989 book “Wonderful Life”. Louis closely examine evidence from a number of empirical studies of evolutionary repeatability and contingency in an effort to fully interrogate ideas about contingency’s role in evolution. In it, researchers from Kenyon College, Michigan State University and Washington University in St. 9 issue of Science explores the complexity of evolution’s predictability in extraordinary detail. How predictable is evolution? The answer long has been debated by biologists grappling with the extent to which history affects the repeatability of evolution. (Photo: Colin Donihue, Harvard University) Washington University’s Jonathan Losos is among a team of researchers who have investigated how similar features can independently evolve in multiple species - such as anole lizards of the Caribbean. 9 issue of Science considers the extent to which evolution is predictable.

Stephen j gould wonderful life