Reexamining Waddington: Canalization and new mutations are not required for the evolution of genetic assimilation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Over 65 years ago, Waddington demonstrated ancestrally phenotypically plastic traits can evolve to become constitutive, a process he termed genetic assimilation. Genetic assimilation evolves rapidly, assumed to be in large part due to segregating genetic variation only expressed in rare/novel environments, but otherwise phenotypically cryptic. Despite previous work suggesting a substantial role of cryptic genetic variation contributing to the evolution of genetic assimilation, some have argued for a prominent role for new mutations of large effect concurrent with selection. Interestingly, Waddington was less concerned by the relative contribution of CGV or new variants, but aimed to test the role of canalization, an evolved form of robustness. While canalization has been extensively studied, its role in the evolution of genetic assimilation is disputed, in part because explicit tests of evolved robustness are lacking. To address these questions, we recreated Waddington’s selection experiments on an environmentally sensitive change in Drosophila wing morphology (crossvein development), using many independently evolved replicate lineages. Using these, we show that 1) a polygenic CGV, but not new variants of large effect are largely responsible for the evolved response demonstrated using both genomic and genetic approaches. 2) Using both environmental manipulations and mutagenesis of the evolved lineages that there is no evidence for evolved changes in canalization contributing to genetic assimilation. Finally, we demonstrate that 3) CGV has potentially pleiotropic and fitness consequences in natural populations and may not be entirely “cryptic”.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".