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MOMENTARILY EXCESSIVE CONSTRUCTION AS THE BASIS FOR PROTOADAPTATION
Author(s) -
Gans Carl
Publication year - 1979
Publication title -
evolution
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.84
H-Index - 199
eISSN - 1558-5646
pISSN - 0014-3820
DOI - 10.1111/j.1558-5646.1979.tb04677.x
Subject(s) - citation , library science , computer science , information retrieval
The concept that all individual organisms are perfectly matched to their environment is clearly a false idealization. Actually, for most individual organisms the structural and physiological capacities are likely to be excessive1 for the needs of any particular moment. In the present context, ''excessive construction" refers to excess capacity, but only in terms of the state of a single character of a particular individual at a particular instant in time. This concept has no implications about the perfection of matching of any population of a species to the particular biotope it currently inhabits. Obviously, natural selection does not "look" just at an organism's momentary utilization of each aspect of the phenotype, but at the requirements imposed on all phenotypic aspects of an individual throughout its life span. The "excess" does represent a paradox. Why should phenotypes be overdesigned? Statements that such overdesign represents a "factor of safety" (cf. Kummer, 1959) hardly explain its origin. In any case they imply technological planning or prescience and should probably be discouraged. Although excessive construction