New Scientist promotes misinformation about evolution

The December 7th issue of New Scientist features a cover promoting an article by Kevin Lala, an evolutionary biologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland (formerly Kevin Laland). The title of the article in the journal is DIY evolution but the online version is The extraordinary ways species control their own evolutionary fate.

It's interesting that the blurbs for the two version also differ ...

Natural selection of random genetic mutation isn't the only way to adapt, argues evolutionary biologist Kevin Lala. (print version)

Natural selection isn't just something that happens to organisms, their activities also play a role, giving some species – including humans – a supercharged ability to evolve. (online version)

Kevin Lala is a proponent of the "Extended Evolutionary Synthesis" (EES). His particular schtick is niche construction meaning that evolution is promoted by organisms that help create their own environment. This behaviorial characteristic of animals is supposed to call into question the fundamentals of modern evolutionary theory based on population genetics.

Recall that evolution is defined as a change in the frequency of alleles in a population and the main mechanisms of change are natural selection and random genetic drift. Variation (creation of alleles) is caused by mutation.

Let's see what Kevin Lala has to say about evolution.

Living in the desert is a challenge. But the Mojave desert woodrat has an ace to play: it can eat poison. This allows the cute little rodent to survive and thrive by feeding on toxic creosote bushes. Remarkably, it hasn’t evolved the genes required to do so. Instead, it eats the faeces of other woodrats and thereby inherits detoxifying bacteria that take up residence in its gut.

The desert woodrat is an example of how the things organisms do can affect their evolution. And it is far from a one-off: in recent years, it has become clear that many organisms influence their own evolution by creating non-genetic traits that can become subject to natural selection. This challenges traditional Darwinian thinking, which sees evolution as a process rooted in random genetic mutation. But that’s not all. These non-genetic ways of adapting may also help explain another puzzling aspect of evolution – evolvability, or why some organisms have a greater capacity to evolve than others.

Oh dear! Not all adaptation is evolution. If the woodrat survives better by eating shit then good for it. That's not evolution because there's no change in the frequency of alleles in the population. And it's not an example of evolvability.

There's more, and I bet you can guess where this is going.

Historically, evolutionary biologists have assumed that since all organisms evolve through natural selection acting on their genes, they should all change at roughly the same rate per generation. Only in recent years has it become clear this isn’t the case – some species and some traits are more evolvable than others. Until now, research has focused on genetic change, and genes undoubtedly are part of the explanation. But emerging evidence indicates that extragenetic processes are important, too.

This idea features in a new book that I co-authored – Evolution Evolving: The developmental origins of adaptation and biodiversity. A variety of processes are involved, but here I will focus on three of the most important and intriguing: epigenetics, symbiotic inheritance and culture. These phenomena aren’t just analogous to biological evolution: they are biological evolution. They allow organisms to invade new environments, cope with change and stress, evolve new phenotypes and resist extinction until adaptive genetic mutations appear.

I won't bore you with any more quotes from the article. Regular readers will know the real facts about epigenetics. Some species have evolved mechanisms to regulate gene expression in response to the environment. The classic example is the regulation of genes involved in the utilization of lactose in E. coli. If lactose is present the genes are expressed but their transcription is repressed in the absence of lactose. In eukaryotes, the binding of transcription factors to specific regulatory sequences triggers changes in chromatin and DNA (methylation) but the evolution of such regulation in response to the environment is the same as in bacteria—it requires changes in the DNA sequence at the transcription factor binding site.

There's nothing radical about epigenetics. It's perfectly normal evolution.

Symbiosis is a rare example of substantial change in the frequency of alleles in a population. It helps explain some of the changes we see in the history of life. It does not require a revision of population genetics.

Cultural change is not biological evolution.

It's easy to see why New Scientist would want to publish such trash; it's because it sells magazines. What we have to do as responsible scientists is to call out such behavior because it undermines respect for science and that is having severe consequences in modern societies.

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