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Rebuilding ships while at sea—Character individuality, homology, and evolutionary innovation
Author(s) -
Schlosser Gerhard
Publication year - 2023
Publication title -
journal of morphology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.652
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1097-4687
pISSN - 0362-2525
DOI - 10.1002/jmor.21522
Subject(s) - character (mathematics) , homology (biology) , biology , evolutionary biology , ancestor , character evolution , epistemology , cognitive science , phylogenetics , genetics , gene , psychology , clade , philosophy , mathematics , history , geometry , archaeology
How novel traits originate in evolution is still one of the most perplexing questions in Evolutionary Biology. Building on a previous account of evolutionary innovation, I here propose that evolutionary novelties are those individualized characters that are not homologous to any characters in the ancestor. To clarify this definition, I here provide a detailed analysis of the concepts of “character individuality” and “homology” first, before addressing their role for our understanding of evolutionary innovation. I will argue (1) that functional as well as structural considerations are important for character individualization; and (2) that compositional (structural) and positional homology need to be clearly distinguished to properly describe the evolutionary transformations of hierarchically structured characters. My account will therefore integrate functional and structural perspectives and put forward a new multi‐level view of character identity and transformation.