MEDIA CONTACT: Cam Terwilliger, 617-547-4100, cam@necsi.edu
Traditional models of evolution found inadequate
How organisms treat their environment is key to survival
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--June 28, 2008--Genes are inherited, but how about the environment? Children inherit many things from their parents, not only genes. New scientific results show that what a parent leaves to its children is important generally in evolution---and has implications for human survival in the future.
Scientists at the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) recently determined that current models of evolution are inadequate since they do not accurately account for how organisms interact with their environment. Published in the journal Complexity, the study introduces a new evolutionary concept to describe this interaction: environmental inheritance.
"Conventional models assume that fitness, which is measured by reproductive success, is linked to hereditary traits and therefore fitness is passed along genetically," said Yaneer Bar-Yam, NECSI President. "However as environments are altered by an organism's behavior, offspring for generations will be affected--if resources become scarce due to over-exploitation offspring will suffer. Environmental inheritance is a way to mathematically measure this long-term effect."
Just as children benefit from inherited wealth, or suffer if we destroy the environment, so do other organisms benefit or lose from how their parents affect the environment. Unlike previous models, NECSI's research provides a mathematical method for quantifying how differing behavior among members of the same species impacts their descendants. Environmental inheritance is important if the way organisms treat their environment affects their offspring more than the offspring of competitors.
The new model also sheds light on an evolutionary phenomenon that has been traditionally difficult to explain--altruism. An altruistic individual seems to behave counter-intuitively, from an evolutionary perspective. It does not exploit as many resources as it might to raise its fitness. Yet many such altruistic behaviors occur in nature.
"To understand the apparently counter-intuitive phenomenon of altruism, a broad view is needed," said Charles Goodnight, a NECSI affiliated researcher. "Though it is mathematically true that selfish exploitative behavior increases the fitness of an individual in the short term, if individuals behave this way over the long term, their offspring find themselves in a resource-poor environment, leading to extinction. The offspring stand a better chance of survival if parents are altruistic, not over-exploiting resources for short term benefit."
According to the researchers, this study has strong cautionary implications for our own species.
"Normally, types that are over-exploitative are not sustainable and die out, allowing less exploitative groups to move in," said Prof. Bar-Yam. "However in our interdependent world, the chances of a global extinction are increased. Because of energy and food distribution and specialization, a collapse in one area could have strong repercussions in others as well. Our civilization has become a tightly interdependent system, like the organs of an animal. The removal of one part is very likely to be harmful to everything else."
The New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) is a non-profit research and education institute developing new scientific methods, and applying them to the challenges of society.
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