Jerarquías, integratión y complejidad en biología. Un posible marco para la evo-devo

Abstract

Throughout history hierarchies have been useful for categorizing and organizing life. It is clear that one hierarchy is not enough for the conceptualization of the complexity and diversity of life as we currently understand them. In this paper we address some of the key challenges associated hierarchies when apprehending biodiversity. Furthermore, we propose a network which consists of different hierarchies that serve as descriptors of processes with genidentity and ontological pluralism. Each hierarchy describes a process from a particular perspective and level. Thus, this network is conceived as growing branches that can divide and join multiple ways. Our approach solves several of the identified challenges and it becomes a way of integrating thoughts to allow the construction of a framework required by evo-devo.