NEW QUESTIONS IN GENETICS AND EVOLUTION

Abstract— The use and misuse of the concept of “developmental constraints” in analyses of allometry, heterochrony, and quantitative genetics is examined. Allometric analysis constitutes an advantageous redescription but poses no constraining explanation; analysis of heterochronies does not by itself establish the existence of developmental constraints; quantitative genetic threshold theories fail to account for why arbitrary alternatives are not to be expected. A structuralist approach to constraints therefore warrants attention; examples involve phyllotaxis, echinoid morphology, shell patterns, metazoan gene regulation, and orthogenesis.

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