Extended Phenotype

Abstract

The idea of the extended phenotype (EP), which was first proposed by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins to explain how and why organisms—or, more fundamentally, their genes—are able to manipulate their environment (Dawkins, 1982), has been the focus of intense debate and much research for more than 20 years. In his book, The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene, Dawkins observed that, “[the extended phenotype] so far changes the way we see animals and plants that it may cause us to think of testable hypotheses that we would otherwise never have dreamed of.” The EP has certainly been the stimulus for a great deal of research activity recently, as the tools of genomics and proteomics provide fresh evidence of its importance. The concept of the EP helps, for example, to explain how parasites modify the behaviour of their hosts to their advantage, or nest‐building behaviour in birds. In particular, the relationship between the bacterial flora of the gut and their mammalian hosts has been a hot topic of late; one that has yielded new examples of the EP to support the themes Dawkins originally outlined. The [extended phenotype] has certainly been the stimulus for a great deal of research activity recently, as the tools of genomics and proteomics provide fresh evidence of its importance At the same time there has been an ongoing debate among proponents of neo‐Darwinism—of which the EP is an important component—between those who advocate the EP and those who advocate theories such as niche construction, which propose that other factors—in addition to genes—have a crucial role in the way that organisms manipulate their environment, so that their descendents inherit both their genetic legacy and their environmental legacy. These different strands of the EP debate were finally pulled together at a conference on …