Zach emphasizes that this is a personal list and others might disagree with his choices. He is much more interested than I am in explaining the history of life with an emphasis on animals. I'm much more interested in molecular evolution so I would choose a slightly different list as I explain below. Please add your own choices in the comments.
- Force, A., Lynch, M., Pickett, F. B., Amores, A., Yan, Y. L., and Postlethwait, J. (1999) Preservation of duplicate genes by complementary, degenerative mutations. Genetics, 151(4), 1531-1545. [doi: 10.1093/genetics/151.4.1531]
- Coyne, J. A., and Orr, H. A. (1989) Patterns of speciation in Drosophila. Evolution, 43(2), 362-381. [doi: 10.1111/j.1558-5646.1989.tb04233.x]
- Lande, R., and Arnold, S. J. (1983) The measurement of selection on correlated characters. Evolution, 1210-1226. [doi: 10.2307/2408842]
- Lederberg, J., and Lederberg, E. M. (1952) Replica plating and indirect selection of bacterial mutants. Journal of bacteriology, 63(3), 399-406. [PDF]
- Gould, S.J. and Lewontin, R.C. (1979) The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist programme. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological Sciences 205:581-598. [doi: 10.1098/rspb.1979.0086]
- Smith, J. M. (1974) The theory of games and the evolution of animal conflicts. Journal of theoretical biology, 47(1), 209-221. [doi: 10.1016/0022-5193(74)90110-6"]
- Fisher, R.A. (1918) The correlation between relatives on the supposition of Mendelian Inheritance. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edingurgh [PDF]
- Hamilton, W. D. (1964) The genetical evolution of social behaviour. II. Journal of theoretical biology, 7(1), 17-52. [doi: 10.1016/0022-5193(64)90039-6]
- Kimura, M. (1968) Evolutionary rate at the molecular level. Nature, 217(5129), 624-626. [PDF]
- Wright, S. (1931) Evolution in Mendelian populations. Genetics, 16(2), 97. [doi: 10.1093/genetics/16.2.97]
I disagree with Hamilton (1964). I realize that there are many evolutionary biologists who think that kin selection and the evolution of altruistic behavior is extremely important1 but I think it's restricted to a tiny perecentage of characteristics in a tiny percentage of all living things on the planet. I would delete the Hamilton paper and replace it with ...
Margoliash, E. (1963) Primary structure and evolution of cytochrome c. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 50(4), 672-679. [PDF]
This is the first accessible paper on using the animo acid seqences of proteins to obtain information on evolution. It's the beginning of the field of molecular evolution and the idea of a molecular clock. Surely that deserves to be one of the most important advances in the field of evolution. (Linus Pauling and Emile Zuckerkandl published similar work on globins at about the same time but their original papers were not as accessible as the Margoliash paper. See Emile Zuckerkandl and the 50th anniversary of the birth of molecular evolution.)
I'm not a big fan of John Maynard Smith and game theory. I think it only applies to a small part of the field of evolution. I would delete the Maynard Smith (1974) paper and replace it with ...
Ohta, T. (1973) Slightly deleterious mutant substitutions in evolution. Nature 246:96-98. [doi:10.1038/246096a0]
This is the beginning of the nearly neutral theory. I agree that putting the Kimura paper on the neutral theory at #2 is a good choice but it's the Ohta paper that really drives home the idea that deleterious mutations can also be fixed under some circumstances and made (some) evolutionary biologists understand that natural selection was not the only game in town.
Finally, I'd like to see one of David Raup's papers in the top ten list but I don't know enough about the other papers to pick one to delete. (I'm skeptical of Lande and Arnold (1983) but I know they have fierce defenders.) Here's a candidate Raup paper that includes Sepkoski.
Raup, David M.; Sepkoski, J. John Jr. (1982) Mass extinctions in the marine fossil record. Science. 215 (4539). [doi:10.1126/science.215.4539.1501]
I'm waiting for the list of the top nine books on evolution—we all know what #1 is going to be.
Image credit: The photo is from Zach's personal website.
1. Richard Dawkins thinks Hamilton is "the greatist Darwinina of my lifetime" [quoted in W.D. Hamilton]
6 comments :
I know what the no.1 book is going to be .... It's Lynch's The Origin of Genome Architecture, isn't it Larry ? :)
I've read two of these. Including the game theory one that you want to remove. Based on my personal knowledge is clearly belongs on the list.
Not sure where they belong in a list of the most important papers, but some honorable mentions in molecular evolution:
Zuckerkandl, E. and Pauling, L. (1965) "Evolutionary Divergence and Convergence in Proteins."
Eck RV, Dayhoff MO. Evolution of the structure of ferredoxin based on living relics of primitive amino Acid sequences. Science. 1966;152(3720):363-366. doi:10.1126/science.152.3720.363
@matts2 Here's the way I look at it. The history of life encompasses more than three billion years of evolution and millions of extinct species. The modern world has about ten million species roughly grouped into five types: bacteria, protozoa, fungi, plants, and animals. Of these, the vast majority are single-cell organisms.
The most important results in evolution are the evolution of cells that contain efficient energy capture structures and complex metabolism. In the case of multicellular organisms, it's accompanied by the evolution of eyes, wings, leaves, and complex developmental processes. All of this can be explained by the fixation of alleles by drift and selection coupled to speciation.
It's not clear to me that game theory makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the history of life. It's only mentioned once in Futuyma's textbook. Why do you think it's so important?
Honourable mention to:
Darwin, C.R. (1859) On the Origin of Species, perhaps the most important book in the history of science.
Dave Bailey
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