Variational Approaches to Evolvability: Short- and Long-Term Perspectives

Abstract

Evolvability, the ability of a biological system to respond to selection, has recently become a key concept in evolutionary developmental biology and an integral part of the vocabulary of a budding extended evolutionary synthesis. While some of the theoretical principles behind the evolvability of complex organisms have been established, there are also several aspects of it that remain controversial. How does evolvability itself evolve? Is evolvability constrained by mutation? Can current definitions account for evolutionary innovations? Here, I will describe some of the research programs dedicated to the study of evolvability of complex organisms. I will then establish its relationship with 1 modularity and robustness and conclude with questions about the nature of evolvability that remain unresolved. My aim is to show that research in evolvability has become integrative in nature and that this change has been aided by an increasing incorporation of the genotype-to-phenotype map into the variation-based evolutionary theory.