Neutral Theory and Phenotypic Evolution
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Updated: Feb 11, 2026

Molecular Evolution of the Tre Recombinase
Published on: May 29, 2008
1Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
Abstract:
Although the neutral theory of molecular evolution was proposed to explain DNA and protein sequence evolution, in principle it could also explain phenotypic evolution. Nevertheless, overall, phenotypes should be less likely than genotypes to evolve neutrally. I propose that, when phenotypic traits are stratified according to a hierarchy of biological organization, the fraction of evolutionary changes in phenotype that are adaptive rises with the phenotypic level considered. Consistently, molecular traits are frequently found to evolve neutrally whereas a large, random set of organismal traits were recently reported to vary largely adaptively. Many more studies of unbiased samples of phenotypic traits are needed to test the general validity of this hypothesis.
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