An introduction: The symposium onThe Evolution of Individualityby Leo W. Buss

• Book ID: 104633870
• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1992
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 96 KB
• Volume: 7
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0169-3867
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00130063

✦ Synopsis

Individuality is an elusive concept to apply across the phyla, and Leo Buss's book, The Evolution of Individuality, re-opens questions about individuality and its role in evolution. Buss shows that for those studying dipterans and vertebrates, the segregation of the germ line early in development confers an assumption of individuality that simply does not apply to other phyla in which the germ line develops late or in those where somatic cells may form new individuals. This leads to the possibility that in several species, individuals may be composed of more than one genotype. Historically, Weismann begat geneticists a scheme that easily fit their attempt to confine hereditary to the transmission of nuclear genes rather than viewing it as part of a developmental process involving a variety of organismal properties. In re-kindling this debate between geneticists (i.e. the Morgan School) and developmental biologists (i.e. Child and later Berill), Leo Buss has provoked a re-examination of how to