The Frailty of Adaptive Hypotheses

Earlier I noted that Michael Lynch has doubts about whether natural selection was responsible for the evolution of multicelluarity:

These results, along with our theoretical work on network evolution, challenge the popular idea that modularity arises as a direct consequence of selection for morphological complexity, and by extension raise questions about the common assumption that natural selection was responsible for the emergence of multicellularity.

A couple of years ago, Lynch published a very interesting article entitled, “The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of organismal complexity” in PNAS (2007) vol. 104, pp. 8597–8604.  You can read the article here.

A couple of excerpts relevant to the evolution of multicellularity are below the fold.

Connecting the Pieces

I really wish I had the time to write more detailed postings for y’all.  For example, last night I drew attention to some recent findings that further support the plausibility of front-loading and seamlessly connect with other proposals on this blog.  But I didn’t get a chance to flesh it out.  So let me add a little more flesh to those front-loaded bones and show specific points where this ties in to my views.