Eneroth Lectures, med Kevin Lala

Eneroth Lecture #5

Kontakt: Pehr Granqvist, professor i psykologi, innehavare av Enerothska professuren.

Föreläsningen hålls på engelska.

Läs mer om Kevin Lala (på engelska)

Sammanfattning (på engelska)

Evolutionary biology is currently coming to terms with a rush of striking findings that challenge the orthodox narrative. Among the most important recent advances in evolutionary understanding is the realization that the evolutionary process itself evolves. Organisms differ greatly in how good they are at evolving. That is because natural selection is not something that just happens to organisms: their activities and behaviors contribute to whether and how it happens. The form that selection takes depends critically on the mechanistic details of how each organism operates – its development, physiology and behavior. For instance, types of inheritance differ greatly across organisms. A profusion of resources other than genes are now known to be passed down the generations, including hormones, symbionts, epigenetic changes, antibodies, ecological resources, and learned knowledge, and this variation, too, can be selected, and generate adaptation. Organisms need to be able to cope with environments that fluctuate on all temporal and spatial scales, and extra-genetic inheritance plays a vital role in short-term adaptation. Different capabilities to modify environments (a.k.a. ‘niche construction’) and to develop flexibly (a.k.a. ‘phenotypic plasticity’) further underpin variation in evolvability. In this talk I draw on the latest findings in evolutionary genetics and evo-devo, as well as novel insights from studies of epigenetics, symbiosis, and inheritance, to examine the central role that developmental processes play in evolution. This perspective has important implications for understanding humans, their evolution and their evolvability.

Bio

Kevin Lala is a professor in the School of Biology, University of St Andrews, UK where he studies evolutionary biology and behavioural science. Previously he held positions at UCL, UC Berkely and the University of Cambridge. He is particularly interested in the evolution of human cognition, and in how the activities of organisms affect their own evolution (niche construction), publishing 14 books and over 300 scientific articles on these topics. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and Royal Society of Biology, a recipient of an ERC Advanced Grant, and his work has been cited over 65,000 times (h=115).

Om Eneroth Lectures

Eneroth lectures är en föreläsningsserie vid Psykologiska institutionen. Den utgörs av akademiska föreläsningar av internationella forskare i forskningsfronten. Eneroth lectures ges ungefär en gång per termin. De är öppna för allmänheten och äger rum på campus Albano, med eller utan digitalt stöd i Zoom.

Läs mer om Eneroth Lectures