Evolvability and the Evolution of Complexity

任何对生物世界惊人的丰富性、多样性和复杂性进行片刻反思的人都会面临这样一个问题：它是如何来到这里的？虽然自然选择是回答这个问题的核心，但重要的新工作已经确定了使某些生物谱系“可进化”的各种条件：能够以从根本上扩大进一步可能变化范围的方式发生变化。本项目将通过实证实例和简单模型来阐明和整合这些不同的条件。这个项目的成果将提供一个更清晰的总体理解，什么是生物复杂性，以及科学如何有令人信服的候选者来理解它是如何进化的。

Anyone engaging in a moment's reflection on the striking richness, diversity, and complexity of the biological world is faced with the question: how did it get here? Though natural selection is central to answering this question, important new work has identified various conditions that make some lineages of organisms "evolvable": capable of changing in ways that radically expand the range of further possible changes. This project will clarify and integrate these various conditions using empirical examples and simple models. The resulting work from this project will provide a clearer general understanding of what biological complexity is, and how science has compelling candidates for understanding how it evolves.