Selection for Gaia across multiple scales
Selection for Gaia across multiple scales
Recently postulated mechanisms and models can help explain the enduring ‘Gaia’ puzzle of environmental regulation mediated by life. Natural selection can produce nutrient recycling at local scales and regulation of heterogeneous environmental variables at ecosystem scales. However, global-scale environmental regulation involves a temporal and spatial decoupling of effects from actors that makes conventional evolutionary explanations problematic. Instead, global regulation can emerge by a process of ‘sequential selection’ in which systems that destabilize their environment are short-lived and result in extinctions and reorganizations until a stable attractor is found. Such persistence-enhancing properties can in turn increase the likelihood of acquiring further persistence-enhancing properties through ‘selection by survival alone’. Thus, Earth system feedbacks provide a filter for persistent combinations of macroevolutionary innovations.
biogeochemical cycling, climate, environmental regulation, feedback, Gaia hypothesis, selection
Lenton, Timothy M.
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Daines, Stuart J.
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Dyke, James G.
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Nicholson, Arwen E.
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Wilkinson, David M.
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Williams, Hywel T.P.
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Lenton, Timothy M.
245a93ab-92e4-4719-a8b7-7ef66d65d048
Daines, Stuart J.
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Dyke, James G.
e2cc1b09-ae44-4525-88ed-87ee08baad2c
Nicholson, Arwen E.
502bc582-967e-4e23-bcb6-d0e47a93c607
Wilkinson, David M.
4ad8aeac-5d43-4404-be01-85cf314f5aad
Williams, Hywel T.P.
939804d2-c807-4b4f-9202-b4d2e9993e64
Lenton, Timothy M., Daines, Stuart J., Dyke, James G., Nicholson, Arwen E., Wilkinson, David M. and Williams, Hywel T.P.
(2018)
Selection for Gaia across multiple scales.
Trends in Ecology & Evolution.
(doi:10.1016/j.tree.2018.05.006).
Abstract
Recently postulated mechanisms and models can help explain the enduring ‘Gaia’ puzzle of environmental regulation mediated by life. Natural selection can produce nutrient recycling at local scales and regulation of heterogeneous environmental variables at ecosystem scales. However, global-scale environmental regulation involves a temporal and spatial decoupling of effects from actors that makes conventional evolutionary explanations problematic. Instead, global regulation can emerge by a process of ‘sequential selection’ in which systems that destabilize their environment are short-lived and result in extinctions and reorganizations until a stable attractor is found. Such persistence-enhancing properties can in turn increase the likelihood of acquiring further persistence-enhancing properties through ‘selection by survival alone’. Thus, Earth system feedbacks provide a filter for persistent combinations of macroevolutionary innovations.
Text
Selection for Gaia across multiple scales TREE accepted
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 2 July 2018
e-pub ahead of print date: 2 July 2018
Keywords:
biogeochemical cycling, climate, environmental regulation, feedback, Gaia hypothesis, selection
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 422309
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/422309
ISSN: 0169-5347
PURE UUID: 92f49c6d-6fe6-401b-af1a-3be7cad40c76
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Date deposited: 20 Jul 2018 16:31
Last modified: 18 Mar 2024 05:18
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Contributors
Author:
Timothy M. Lenton
Author:
Stuart J. Daines
Author:
Arwen E. Nicholson
Author:
David M. Wilkinson
Author:
Hywel T.P. Williams
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