English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Macroevolution posed difficulties for Darwin and later theorists because species’ phenotypes frequently change abruptly, or experience long periods of stasis, both counter to the theory of incremental change or gradualism. We introduce a statistical model that accommodates this uneven evolutionary landscape by estimating two kinds of historical change: directional changes that shift the mean phenotype along the branches of a phylogenetic tree, and evolvability changes that alter a clade’s ability to explore its trait-space. In mammals, we find that both processes make substantial independent contributions to explaining macroevolution, and are rarely linked. ‘Watershed’ moments of increased evolvability greatly outnumber reductions in evolutionary potentials, and large or abrupt phenotypic shifts are explicable statistically as biased random walks, allowing macroevolutionary theory to engage with the language and concepts of gradualist microevolution. Our findings recast macroevolutionary phenomena, illustrating the necessity of accounting for a variety of evolutionary processes simultaneously.

General statistical model shows that macroevolutionary patterns and processes are consistent with Darwinian gradualism