It's Darwin! An Evolutionary Lens on Knowledge and Truth

If you are like me, you may not remember the way you viewed the world before you understood evolution. While I may not know exactly when that change occurred for me, as a biology teacher now, I find myself wondering how I can help my students gain this worldview. I started using the term “evolution goggles” to encourage my students to engage this unifying theme in biology whenever we look at new problems in my courses (Figure 1). But I would suggest that an evolutionary lens is helpful beyond biology and should become part of the liberal-arts education experience. We all ask different questions when we view issues in terms of evolutionary concepts and processes. An evolutionary viewpoint is an important and relevant way for many of our students interested in healthcare, agriculture, psychology, and engineering to understand their disciplines, but we need to make the connection clear to them. Figure 1. Evolution goggles. Take the issue of antibiotic resistance. We argue that future medical practitioners need an understanding of evolution to avoid overprescribing …

In 1868, Lydia Becker (1827-1890), the renowned Manchester suffragist, announced in a talk before the British Association for the Advancement of Science that the mind had no sex. A year later, she presented original botanical research at the BAAS, contending that a parasitic fungus forced normally single-sex female flowers of Lychnis diurna to develop stamens and become hermaphroditic. This essay uncovers the complex relationship between Lydia Becker's botanical research and her stance on women's rights by investigating how her interest in evolutionary theory, as well as her correspondence with Charles Darwin, critically informed her reform agendas by providing her with a new vocabulary for advocating for equality. One of the facts that Becker took away from her work on Lychnis was that even supposedly fixed, dichotomous categories such as biological sex became unfocused under the evolutionary lens. The details of evolutionary theory, from specific arguments on structural adaptations to more encompassing theories on heredity (i.e., pangenesis), informed Becker's understanding of human physiology. At the same time, Becker's belief in the fundamental equality of the sexes enabled her to perceive the distinction between inherent, biological differences and culturally contingent ones. She applied biological principles to social constructs as she asked: Do analogous evolutionary forces act on humans?

Nearly all plants are colonized by fungal endophytes, and a growing body of work shows that both environment and host species shape plant-associated fungal communities. However, few studies place their work in a phylogenetic context to understand endophyte community assembly through an evolutionary lens. Here, we investigated environmental and host effects on root endophyte assemblages in coastal Louisiana marshes. We isolated and sequenced culturable fungal endophytes from roots of three to four dominant plant species from each of three sites of varying salinity. We assessed taxonomic diversity and composition as well as phylogenetic diversity (mean phylogenetic distance, MPD) and phylogenetic composition (based on MPD). When we analyzed plant hosts present across the entire gradient, we found that the effect of the environment on phylogenetic diversity (as measured by MPD) was host dependent and suggested phylogenetic clustering in some circumstances. We found that both environment and host plant affected taxonomic composition of fungal endophytes, but only host plant affected phylogenetic composition, suggesting different host plants selected for fungal taxa drawn from distinct phylogenetic clades, whereas environmental assemblages were drawn from similar clades. Our study demonstrates that including phylogenetic, as well as taxonomic, community metrics can provide a deeper understanding of community assembly in endophytes.

In the UK, immigrant women from developing countries are more likely to initiate breastfeeding and sustain it for longer periods than women in the nonimmigrant white population. This desirable pattern, however, is being eroded among UK-born generations where incidence and duration of lactation are significantly lower than in first-generation immigrants. I use concepts and principles derived from life history theory and human reproductive ecology to explore how the physical environment may affect the costs and benefits of alternative breastfeeding strategies. Specifically, I compare two ecological scenarios: one of high infectious risk and energetic constraint like the one prevailing in the countries of origin of many immigrant communities versus one of low infectious disease risk and energy surplus characteristic of host countries like the UK. I contrast the results with the empirical findings on breastfeeding rates obtained during a migrant study conducted among first- and second-generation Bangladeshi women living in London. Finally, I discuss how the insights obtained taking an evolutionary approach may be incorporated into programmes and policies related to infant feeding practices and maternal health among immigrant populations.

Romanticizing leaders as caring pastors usually benefits followers, by having someone to protect them or to blame if things go wrong. But, why would leaders want to play along and pretend they are carers? This is a theory-building manuscript, which uses a revelatory context, to explore caring leadership from a novel angle, using evolutionary theory to identify an anomaly within caring leadership theory. The revelatory context used for this study was English higher education. Here, 47 interviews were done with government/organizational leaders, including 24 university Chief Executives (i.e. university Presidents). The revelatory context evidenced that leaders sometimes develop cognitions about their impotence to control things. Thus, leaders play along the caring leadership delusion, because it is a mechanism for them to deny their impotence. The paper expands caring leadership theory, by suggesting that this is not exclusively about authentic caring, but also about convergent denial and realistic egocentrism.

Experimentalist forms of governance have burgeoned across policy areas and institutional contexts in recent years. Recognizing that experimentalist forms of governance can evolve along a plethora of distinct pathways, this paper inquires how the evolutionary nature of experimentalism can be explored in greater depth. Linking the framework of experimentalist governance to that of Evolutionary Governance Theory (EGT), the paper identifies three driving mechanisms of contingency in experimentalism: governance being (1) self-referential, (2) rooted in observation, and (3) steered by dependencies. The paper then refers to recent efforts in the realm of energy transition governance in the Netherlands to illustrate how these contingency mechanisms can help to interrogate the variegated evolutionary pathways that experimentalist governance may have in practice. Building on this Dutch empirical context, the paper puts forward evolutionary path- and context-mapping as a fruitful tool for identifying and disentangling the myriad of pathways along which experimentalism may manifest itself.

Three-player repeated games with an opt-out option

Human physique and behaviour has been shaped by the pressures of natural selection. This is received wisdom in all scientifically informed circles. Currently, the topic of crime is rarely touched upon in textbooks on evolution and the topic of evolution rarely even mentioned in criminology textbooks. This book for the first time explores how an evolution informed criminology has clear implications for enhancing our understanding of the criminal law, crime and criminal behaviour. This book is directed more towards students of criminology than students of evolution. It is suggested that there is scope for more collaborative work, with criminologists and crime scientists exposed to Darwinian thought having much to gain. What is suggested is simply that such thinking provides a fresh perspective. If that perspective yields only a fraction of the understanding when applied to crime as it has elsewhere in science, the effort will have been worthwhile. The authors attempt to provide a modest appraisal of the potential contribution that a more welcoming approach to the evolutionary perspective would make to criminology; both theoretically (by expanding understanding of the complexity of the origins of behaviour labelled criminal) and practically (where the evolutionary approach can be utilised to inform crime control policy and practice). An evolutionary lens is applied to diverse criminological topics such as the origins of criminal law, female crime, violence, and environmental factors involved in crime causation.

Background: Explanatory frameworks for mental disorders have an important effect on stigmatisation and clinical attitudes, with mechanistic biological explanations often yielding mixed or negative effects on prognostic optimism and empathy. Evolutionary framings may offer functional, non-pathologizing explanations which could reduce stigma and empower patients, but few attempts have been made to test this empirically.Aims: This study aimed to experimentally test whether a brief educational intervention based on an evolutionary explanation of anxiety, compared to a genetic explanation, would influence clinicians’ attitudes in directions consistent with anti-stigma goals.Method: In a pre-registered, multi-site, double-blind experiment, 171 practicing mental health clinicians across the UK and Ireland were cluster-randomised by session to receive a 30-minute educational presentation on either evolutionary or genetic explanations for anxiety. Pre- and post-session questionnaires assessed clinicians’ optimism regarding patient recovery, the efficacy of psychosocial interventions, expected patient willingness to share diagnoses and engage in help-seeking behavior, and the perceived usefulness of the information. Data were analysed using Bayesian cumulative ordinal regression and linear regression.Results: Compared to the genetic explanation, clinicians rated the evolutionary explanation as substantially more useful for patients (Odds Ratio [OR] = 5.05, 95% Credible Interval [CI] [2.46, 10.28]) and for clinicians (OR = 3.10, 95% CI [1.62, 5.81]). These showed very large mean effect sizes, of 1.07 SD (95% CI [0.65, 1.50]) and 0.76 SD CI (95% CI [0.38, 1.17]). In comparison to the genetic explanation, the evolutionary explanation was also anticipated to increase public willingness to seek psychiatric help (OR = 1.79, 95% CI [0.93, 3.35]) and share a diagnosis (OR = 1.62, 95% CI [0.88, 2.97]). It also increased optimism about patient recovery (OR = 1.58, 95% CI [0.71, 3.46]), and the perceived effectiveness of psychosocial interventions (OR = 1.62, 95% CI [0.84, 3.10]). Furthermore, it increased clinicians’ belief in the functional usefulness of negative emotions (β = 0.25 SD, 95% CI [0.49, 0.01]).Conclusions: Distinct explanatory frameworks may be a potent determinant of clinicians' and patients’ attitudes. This study provides robust evidence that framing anxiety through an evolutionary lens can be a powerful tool to foster more optimistic and destigmatized perspectives, compared to a genetic explanation. In particular, clinicians overwhelmingly rated evolutionary explanations of anxiety as highly useful in comparison to genetic explanations. Integrating evolutionary explanations into mainstream clinical education presents an under-explored opportunity with numerous potential benefits.

On the surface, cognitive biases appear to be puzzling when viewed through an evolutionary lens. Because they depart from standards of logic and accuracy, they appear to be design flaws instead of examples of good evolutionary engineering. Biases are often ascribed to cognitive “constraints” or flaws in the design of the mind that were somehow not overcome by evolution. To the evolutionary psychologist, however, evolved psychological mechanisms are expected to solve particular problems well, in ways that contributed to fitness ancestrally. Viewed in this way, cognitive biasescould have evolved because they positively impacted fitness. They are, then, not necessarily designflaws—instead, they could be design features. This chapter describes research documenting adaptive biases across many domains. These include inferences about danger, the cooperativeness of others, and the sexual and romantic interests of prospective mates. This chapter also addresses the question of why biases often seem to be implemented at the cognitive level, producing genuine misperceptions, rather than merely biases in enacted behavior. Keywords: evolutionary psychology; cognitive biases; error management theory; social cognition; sexual misperception

The practice of psychotherapy revolves around human relationships, especially between client and therapist. At base, psychotherapy is “a species of human interaction that establishes the therapist as a protective figure or secure base in a way that facilitates client growth and change” (Bailey, 1997). This secure interpersonal base enables the client to confront inner conflict, interpersonal conflict/deficiencies, and negative thoughts about the self and others (see Gilbert this volume). Evolutionary kinship therapy views the client-therapist relationship, and client relations with others, through an evolutionary lens that focuses on the role that ancestral human relationships played in shaping current social behavior (Bailey, 2000; Bailey & Wood, 1998). This article outlines psychological kinship theory and then applies the logic of the model to selected aspects of the client-therapist relationship.

Muscular dystrophy through an evolutionary lens

Cancer therapeutics through an evolutionary lens.

<h3>Abstract</h3> Public good exploitation has been studied extensively from an evolutionary lens, but little is known about the occurrence and impact of public good exploiters in natural communities. Here, we develop a reverse ecology approach to systematically identify bacteria that can exploit public goods produced during the degradation of polysaccharides. Focusing on chitin – the second most abundant biopolymer on the planet, we show that public good exploiters hinder the growth of degraders and invade marine microbial communities during early stages of colonization. Unlike cheaters in social evolution, exploiters and polysaccharide degraders (cooperators) come together by a process of community assembly, belong to distant lineages, and can stably coexist. Thus, our approach opens novel avenues to interpret the wealth of genomic data through an ecological lens.

The consumer realm offers a window into our evolved human nature. Many consumer choices, preferences, and behaviors are rooted in one of four key Darwinian clusters: (1) survival (e.g., gustatory penchant for highly caloric foods); (2) mating (e.g., employing products as sexual signals); (3) kin selection (e.g., the effects of genetic relatedness and genetic assuredness on gift giving); and (4) reciprocal altruism (gift‐giving rituals among nonkin). The evolutionary lens provides consumer researchers important benefits including the ability to identify novel research questions, and greater interdisciplinarity, methodological pluralism, theoretical parsimony, and consilience. Homo consumericus cannot be entirely understood without acknowledging the evolutionary forces that have forged our minds and bodies.