The Stockholm Paradigm

Abstract

The full richness of Darwinian evolution emerges when conflicts in fitness space driven by reproductive overrun are coupled with changes in the conditions. Perturbations in the conditions create changes in fitness space—old opportunities disappear and new ones arise, catalyzing a shift from exploitation-biased to exploration-biased behavior by inheritance systems, including entire biotas which may be affected by the same external event. This produces widespread biotic mixing as each inheritance system explores both the geographical and functional dimensions of its newly altered fitness space. Exploration takes the form of generalizing in fitness space, moving away from parts that have deteriorated to new parts previously inaccessible or nonexistent, using the capacity for ecological fitting inherent to the nature of the organism. After the perturbation, parts of the original inheritance system become isolated and begin specializing in the newly explored parts of fitness space when selection for exploitation-biased behavior takes over. Repeated cycles of expansion/exploration/generalization and isolation/exploitation/specialization driven by repeated external perturbations are what produce the complex web of interacting species—Darwin’s Entangled Bank—that we observe. Changing the conditions thus catalyzes the dynamics that allow biological systems to oscillate between being exploiters and explorers of their surroundings, giving them their fundamental capacity to cope with change and routinely escape complete extinction. Even after mass extinction, so long as some life still exists, there is massive potential for its evolutionary renewal. The Stockholm Paradigm is the integration of all these factors, describing the dynamic behind Darwin’s Entangled Bank.