Abstract
Adaptation is a concept central to evolutionary biology that explains why organisms fit their environment according to natural selection. An adaptation can be defined as a novel character appearing in an organism and maintained by natural selection. This concept must therefore be studied at two different levels, within a phylogenetic analysis for inferring relative novelty and within a populational analysis to assess the role of natural selection. By addition of these two study levels, ad hoc or tautological proposals of adaptive characters may be avoided. The related concepts of preadaptation or exaptation feature the importance of considering both a structure and its function to better understand the evolution of a character. The structure can remain stable and the function can change, subsequently contributing to an evolutionary innovation.
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Notes
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A clade is a group of taxa including a common ancestor and all its descendants. This is a monophyletic group.
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Process of genetic drift, when variation in frequencies and fixation of alleles are made by random walk.
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They are effects of the organisms’ structure in a developmental perspective (such as, amongst others, the Bauplan, or organisation levels, inherited from a deep ancestor, for example the organisational level of “vertebrates”).
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Processes by which a phenotype initially produced in response to an environmental stimulus is finally expressed genetically, independently of the stimulus action.
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Variation of a trait caused by environmental changes.
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A grade is a paraphyletic group (i.e. including an ancestor and some of its descendants only), an invalid group in evolutionary biology and phylogenetic systematics. This kind of group is built on the basis of a misleading assumption of evolutionary progress, together including taxa supposedly primitive and evolved with regard to characters on which a focus is put.
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Ability of a given phenotype to reproduce and transmit its genes, in given conditions.
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Sister-groups are closer relatives to each other and they constitute an entire monophyletic group.
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Cut of the petiole owing to a particular structure in the tissue, allowing the fall of leaves.
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Ancestral trait or character, not modified.
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Trees whose leaves do not fall together seasonally.
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Transfer of genetic material by other means that specific reproduction mechanisms and by capture of genetic material present in the environment (possibly interspecific); to be distinguished from vertical transfers (sexual reproduction, pathenogenesis, scissiparity).
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It is said from the appearance of animals advertising a potential predator that it is dangerous to eat them (e.g., toxicity).
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Grandcolas, P. (2015). Adaptation. In: Heams, T., Huneman, P., Lecointre, G., Silberstein, M. (eds) Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9014-7_5
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