Comments on: Book review – Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA

By: Book review – On the Wing: Insects, Pterosaurs, Birds, Bats and the Evolution of Animal Flight | The Inquisitive Biologist

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 12:44:29 +0000

[…] (p. 22). Evolution makes do with the materials and structures an animal already possesses, and readily repurposes them. He cleverly cordons off in boxes explainers that are self-evident to biologists or engineers but […]

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By: Book review – Macroevolutionaries: Reflections on Natural History, Paleontology, and Stephen Jay Gould | The Inquisitive Biologist

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 11:07:48 +0000

[…] Gould is similarly famous for his thought experiment of “replaying the tape of life” and asking whether the outcome would be the same (an idea that has come up here in previous reviews). He answered “no” and in the process made a case for the importance of contingencies in the history of life. What I did not realise, and the authors here clarify, is how Gould’s views on the relative importance of contingency and natural laws swung back and forth over the course of his career. One more example of engagement with Gould’s ideas will have to do. When Is a Raptor a Parrot? The Curious Case of the American Kestrel starts as an essay about bird phylogeny before pivoting to Gould & Lewontin’s famous spandrels paper and Gould & Vrba’s exaptation paper. In these, Gould and colleagues argued against adaptationist explanations for every single trait an organism shows, while proposing a new term (exaptation instead of adaptation) for traits that initially evolved in one context or were neutral, and were later coopted in another context. […]

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By: Book review – Full Fathom 5000: The Expedition of HMS Challenger and the Strange Animals It Found in the Deep Sea | The Inquisitive Biologist

Tue, 06 Aug 2024 15:03:11 +0000

[…] he makes nicely formulated, thought-provoking observations on evolution. He mentions its tendency to modify existing structures rather than innovate completely novel ones. He flips the script on our perception of gelatinous creatures. Given that the deep sea is the […]

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By: Book review – Imperfection: A Natural History | The Inquisitive Biologist

Book review – Imperfection: A Natural History | The Inquisitive Biologist — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 12:35:37 +0000

[…] structures are actually common. Also known as exaptations, this one was discussed at length in Some Assembly Required. Stephen Jay Gould wrote about the panda’s second thumb (a repurposing of the sesamoid bone […]

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By: Book review – The Voices of Nature: How and Why Animals Communicate | The Inquisitive Biologist

Thu, 22 Feb 2024 12:43:53 +0000

[…] communication, discussing two models of how signals evolve. The precursor sender model is a case of exaptation: existing behaviours or structures are turned into new communication signals. For example fish, […]

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By: Book review – The Evolutionary Origins of Life and Death | The Inquisitive Biologist

Fri, 09 Feb 2024 15:38:01 +0000

[…] Third, how did PCD evolve in unicellular organisms? You would think that natural selection would quickly eliminate it. Understanding this means accepting that natural selection can act on multiple levels, including kin selection and, more controversially, group selection. Durand takes his time here, in two chapters making a case in favour of the idea that PCD is an adaptation, and presenting the counterargument that it is not. Adaptive examples include PCD limiting the spread of infection by viruses or being a form of resource sharing in cooperative groups (PCD can release substances that provide information or nutrition to neighbours). On the other hand, there are interesting arguments to be made for ersatz PCD, a German term perhaps best translated as “surrogate”. This is cell death, but it is not programmed. Instead, it occurs as an unwanted side effect of selection for another trait (in genetics, one gene having multiple effects is called pleiotropy). Durand points out that, of course, that does not stop it from later becoming an adaptation in multicellular organisms, which would make it an example of an exaptation. […]

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By: Book review – From Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds: Six Myths of Evolution | The Inquisitive Biologist

Sat, 17 Sep 2022 11:23:12 +0000

[…] with cladistics and prevent tidy narratives. And echoing the take-home message from Shubin’s Some Assembly Required (that evolutionary innovations never come about during the transitions they are associated with) […]

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By: Book review – The Earth: A Biography of Life | The Inquisitive Biologist

Book review – The Earth: A Biography of Life | The Inquisitive Biologist — Fri, 22 Jul 2022 09:31:25 +0000

[…] of evolution back-to-front” (p. 88). This was an important theme in Neil Shubin’s book Some Assembly Required: major evolutionary transitions often come about as a result of reusing, repurposing or rejiggling […]

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By: Book review – The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity | The Inquisitive Biologist

Wed, 13 Jul 2022 09:30:12 +0000

[…] known long before they were applied systematically, this sounds like the historical equivalent of Neil Shubin’s argument that “biological innovations never come about during the great transitions they are […]

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By: Book review – The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us | The Inquisitive Biologist

Fri, 24 Jun 2022 11:34:24 +0000

[…] 100–80 million years ago. It is a brilliant example of what Neil Shubin highlighted in Some Assembly Required; that evolutionary innovations never come about with the great transitions they are associated […]

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