The problem of adaptations: an holistic approach.
On the basis of recent advances in molecular genetics and embryology the role of phenotypic plasticity in the origin of adaptations has been reviewed and emphasized. Carrying on Waddington's experimental research on genetic assimilation, the epigenetic landscape, where genotype, phenotype and environment meet, should be investigated as the place in which environmental information may be embodied in the organism and evolutionary novelties could arise. An holistic, multilevel approach, with the organism as the basic level for the genesis of adaptations and the population as upper level as improving and/or altering, through selective and random factors, the evolutionary pattern, is then envisaged.
Sarà
M
M
D000220:Adaptation, Biological; D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution