title: More on how and why: a response to commentaries.
abstract: We are grateful to the commentators for taking the time to respond to our article. Too many interesting and important points have been raised for us to tackle them all in this response, and so in the below we have sought to draw out the major themes. These include problems with both the term 'ultimate causation' and the proximate-ultimate causation dichotomy more generally, clarification of the meaning of reciprocal causation, discussion of issues related to the nature of development and phenotypic plasticity and their roles in evolution, and consideration of the need for an extended evolutionary synthesis.
authors: School of Biology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK.
authors: Kevin N
authors: KN
authors: Laland
authors: John
authors: J
authors: Odling-Smee
authors: William
authors: W
authors: Hoppitt
authors: Tobias
authors: T
authors: Uller
keywords: Developmental bias; Developmental plasticity; Extended evolutionary synthesis; Mayr; Niche construction; Proximate causation; Ultimate causation
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