Abstract
Walter Fontana presents in his paper a convincing case for the relevance of neutrality as a paradigm of change for biological systems. Neutrality means a drift of a biological system through a succession of states which do not change the phenotype of the system and which are therefore neutral to natural selection. By such a succession of neutral states the system may accidentally come near to a position in which one further small incremental change in genotype implies the transfer of the system to another phenotype, a transfer which may be perceived to be an improbable one and which perhaps would not have happened in the absence of neutrality. Another twist one can give to the same argument will not look to a temporal succes sion of states but to the simultaneous occurrence of different genotypes in a population of units. All these different genotypes will produce the same phenotype and can therefore coexist in a neutral space. If a need for a differ ent phenotype should arise there will always exist in such a population of genotypes some exemplars which by some few alterations can effect a trans fer into the advantageous phenotype. In this way neutrality as a theoretical paradigm presents a good case for a continuous evolution going on in a pop ulation of genotypes being equivalent towards one another in a phenotypi cal sense. All of these genotypes stand for possible alterations. At the same time, a concept of discontinuity can be formulated on this basis.
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© 2006 Rudolf Stichweh
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Stichweh, R. (2006). Neutrality as a Paradigm of Change. In: Wimmer, A., Kössler, R. (eds) Understanding Change. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524644_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524644_6
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