Selection for Gaia across Multiple Scales.

Trends Ecol Evol

Earth System Science, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, EX4 4QE, UK; Computer Science, College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, University of Exeter, EX4 4QE, UK.

Published: August 2018

Recently postulated mechanisms and models can help explain the enduring 'Gaia' puzzle of environmental regulation mediated by life. Natural selection can produce nutrient recycling at local scales and regulation of heterogeneous environmental variables at ecosystem scales. However, global-scale environmental regulation involves a temporal and spatial decoupling of effects from actors that makes conventional evolutionary explanations problematic. Instead, global regulation can emerge by a process of 'sequential selection' in which systems that destabilize their environment are short-lived and result in extinctions and reorganizations until a stable attractor is found. Such persistence-enhancing properties can in turn increase the likelihood of acquiring further persistence-enhancing properties through 'selection by survival alone'. Thus, Earth system feedbacks provide a filter for persistent combinations of macroevolutionary innovations.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2018.05.006DOI Listing

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