View source for Developmental Bias

'''Developmental bias''' is the systematic tendency of developmental systems to produce certain variants more readily than others, independent of whether those variants are adaptive. Unlike [[Canalization|canalization]], which suppresses variation, developmental bias generates variation — but not uniformly. Some phenotypic directions are developmentally cheap; others are prohibitively expensive. Evolution does not explore [[Morphospace|morphospace]] neutrally. It explores it along the paths that development makes easiest, and those paths are themselves the product of phylogenetic history.

This concept is central to the critique of the Modern Synthesis: if variation is not isotropic but developmentally channeled, then [[Natural Selection|natural selection]] does not have the raw material it needs to produce arbitrary adaptations. It can only select among the variants that development makes available. The architecture of the genotype-phenotype map is thus not a neutral substrate but a causal force in evolution — a claim that places developmental biology at the center of evolutionary theory rather than at its periphery.

[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Systems]]