Abstract
Following two seminal papers published in the journal Paleobiology by Stephen Jay Gould and Elisabeth Vrba several decades ago, I suggest a new term (stoch-aptation) to refer to those individual traits or sets of traits that provide, just by chance, fitness adventages to species when faced with catastrophes (i.e. geological events triggering massive mortality), and that may lead to the origin of taxonomical entities above the species level. I provide as an example of stoch-aptations the set of features that helped mammals pass the Cretaceous-Paleogene transition, as well as traits behind the success of living fossils. However, the identification of specific stoch-aptations can be difficult. This missing term is necessary and useful to (a) consolidate the idea of selection at different hierarchical levels, (b) acknowledge the role of chance in the evolution of higher taxonomical categories and (c) think of the role of geological catastrophes as generators of innovation.
Highlights
Following two seminal papers published in the journal Paleobiology by Stephen Jay Gould and Elisabeth Vrba several decades ago, I suggest a new term to refer to those individual traits or sets of traits that provide, just by chance, fitness adventages to species when faced with catastrophes, and that may lead to the origin of taxonomical entities above the species level
I am writing here to suggest that these unpredictable features that make species successful after periods of massive extinction lack a name in evolutionary biology and paleontology, and, as indicated by Gould and Vrba (1982), unnamed ideas run the risk of being unconsidered or at least underconsidered
Along the same line of thought presented by Gould and Vrba (1982) when introducing the term exaptation, I want to stress that the term preadaptation is not an adequate substitution of stoch-aptation because it gives a wrong idea of prediction at the long run, and after massive environmental change, which does not correspond to reality
Summary
Following two seminal papers published in the journal Paleobiology by Stephen Jay Gould and Elisabeth Vrba several decades ago, I suggest a new term (stoch-aptation) to refer to those individual traits or sets of traits that provide, just by chance, fitness adventages to species when faced with catastrophes (i.e. geological events triggering massive mortality), and that may lead to the origin of taxonomical entities above the species level. This missing term is necessary and useful to (a) consolidate the idea of selection at different hierarchical levels, (b) acknowledge the role of chance in the evolution of higher taxonomical categories and (c) think of the role of geological catastrophes as generators of innovation.
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