1. Adaptation and the Evolution of Physiological Characters
Bennett, A. F. 1997. Adaptation and the evolution of physiological characters, pp. 3-16. In: Handbook of Physiology, Sect. 13: Comparative Physiology. W. H. Dantzler, ed. Oxford Univ. Press, New York. 1. Adaptation and the evolution of physiological characters Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, ALBERT F. BENNETT 1 Irvine, California among the biological sciences (for example, behavioral CHAPTER CONTENTS science [I241). The Many meanings of "Adaptationn In general, comparative physiologists have been Criticisms of Adaptive Interpretations much more successful in, and have devoted much more Alternatives to Adaptive Explanations energy to, pursuing the former rather than the latter Historical inheritance goal (37). Most of this Handbook is devoted to an Developmentai pattern and constraint Physical and biomechanical correlation examination of mechanism-how various physiologi- Phenotypic size correlation cal systems function in various animals. Such compara- Genetic correlations tive studies are usually interpreted within a specific Chance fixation evolutionary context, that of adaptation. That is, or- Studying the Evolution of Physiological Characters ganisms are asserted to be designed in the ways they Macroevolutionary studies Microevolutionary studies are and to function in the ways they do because of Incorporating an Evolutionary Perspective into Physiological Studies natural selection which results in evolutionary change. The principal textbooks in the field (for example, refs. 33, 52, 102, 115) make explicit reference in their titles to the importance of adaptation to comparative COMPARATIVE PHYSIOLOGISTS HAVE TWO GOALS. The physiology, as did the last comparative section of this first is to explain mechanism, the study of how organ- Handbook (32). Adaptive evolutionary explanations isms are built functionally, "how animals work" (113).
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