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Publication Details
AFRICAN RESEARCH NEXUS
SHINING A SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAN RESEARCH
agricultural and biological sciences
Exaptation—a Missing Term in the Science of Form
Paleobiology, Volume 1, Year 1982
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Description
Adaptation has been defined and recognized by two different criteria: historical genesis (features built by natural selection for their present role) and current utility (features now enhancing fitness no matter how they arose). Biologists have often failed to recognize the potential confusion between these different definitions because we have tended to view natural selection as so dominant among evolutionary mechanisms that historical process and current product become one. Yet if many features of organisms are non-adapted, but available for useful cooptation in descendants, then an important concept has no name in our lexicon (and unnamed ideas generally remain unconsidered): features that now enhance fitness but were not built by natural selection for their current role. We propose that such features be called exaptations and that adaptation be restricted, as Darwin suggested, to features built by selection for their current role. We present several examples of exaptation, indicating where a failure to conceptualize such an idea limited the range of hypotheses previously available. We explore several consequences of exaptation and propose a terminological solution to the problem of preadaptation. © 1982, Paleontological Society. All rights reserved.
Authors & Co-Authors
Gould, Stephen Jay
United States, Cambridge
Harvard University
Vrba, Elisabeth S.
South Africa, Pretoria
Transvaal Museum
Statistics
Citations: 4,091
Authors: 2
Affiliations: 2
Identifiers
Doi:
10.1017/S0094837300004310
ISSN:
00948373
e-ISSN:
19385331