Extending the Darwinian Framework: 
New levels of selection and inheritance

Workshop at the European Conference on Artificial Life 2007, September 10th 2007, Lisbon.

Organised by:
Alexandra Penn
Hywel Williams
Chrisantha Fernando

****** UPDATE: 3rd July 2007 ******

** Paper Submission Closed ** Call for Abstracts/Participation **

Submission of papers and oral presentations is now closed. However, we will continue to accept abstracts for poster presentations. We expect to announce additional invited speakers in the very near future, and hope to encourage researchers interested in all areas of evolutionary theory to attend this exciting workshop.

****** UPDATE: 4th June 2007 ******

We can now announce that the workshop will be partly funded through ESIGNET. The ESIGNET project (Evolving Cell Signaling Networks in Silico) is a Specific Targeted Research Project funded by the European Commission under the Sixth Framework Programme.

****** UPDATE: 8th May 2007 ******

** New Speakers Announced ** Submission Deadline Extended **

The workshop is shaping up nicely. We are pleased to announce that in addition to Eors Szathmary, we can now confirm that John Odling-Smee (co-author of the theory of niche construction) and Mark Pallen (professor of microbial genetics at University of Birmingham) will be speaking at the workshop and taking part in the panel discussion. We are currently in contact with several other high-profile speakers and hope to make further announcements soon.

We are also pleased to be able to extend the deadline for paper submissions by a full two months. Apologies to those who have already submitted work, or have been pushing hard to meet the previous deadline, but a change in the planned publication schedule means that we are able to relax our submission date. If you have already submitted a paper and would like to use the extra time to improve your submission, please get in touch with one of the organisers.

We hope that the deadline extension will allow contributors to come up with really high quality submissions. This workshop offers an opportunity to be bold and creative, and to discuss exciting new questions in evolutionary theory in a stimulating environment. We already have a list of attendees which spans a wide variety of disciplines, research questions, and methodologies. This blend of approaches should make for an interesting exchange of ideas, which we intend to develop in a special issue of a respected journal (details to be announced).

Finally, perhaps the most exciting new announcement is that during the lunch break at the workshop we will be treated to a dub reggae rendition of Darwin's Origin of Species. This happy marriage of Caribbean roots music and the original theory of evolution is brought to us courtesy of the Genomic Dub Collective and surely represents one of Prof Mark Pallen's most intriguing collaborations. Clear proof that we are truly `Extending the Darwinian Framework'!

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This workshop will explore the formation of new levels of selection and inheritance, the origin of the first evolutionary units and novel modes of natural selection. Recent work in a variety of fields has presented a challenge to standard gene-centric evolutionary theory. Higher-level and non-genetic sources of heredity have been discovered. Artificial selection experiments have demonstrated a response to selection of whole microbial ecosystems, with concomitant implications for the formation of new evolutionary units. These results bear important relation to long-standing questions regarding the formation of new levels of biological organisation. The debate over levels of selection has an extended history. However, given recent empirical results and outstanding unresolved issues, it again seems pertinent to ask: What can selection act on? What sources of heritable variation exist? How can selection bring about new units of selection? And how can artificial life models help to answer such questions?

In this session we intend to explore the boundaries of Darwinian evolution, by unpicking the criteria for evolution by natural selection: Individuality; heritable variation; reproduction and fitness. Examining the implications for when and how selection can act on a unit, how we can measure that it has, and reconsidering the role of fundamental concepts such as individual, ecosystem, selective pressure and autonomy.

By facilitating in depth and focussed discussion about the key issues involved, as well as allowing presentation of new work and perspectives, we aim to consolidate conceptual understanding of current issues in evolutionary biology.

Areas of interest:

• Major transitions in evolution
• Formation of new units of selection and/or levels of inheritance
• Non-genetic heredity/epigenetics
• Evolution of co-operation
• Ecosystem selection
• Multi-level selection theory
• Niche construction and extended heredity
• Origins of life
• Homeostasis and heredity/levels of homeostasis
• Self-organisation and formation of new levels of selection and heredity
• Development and selection
• Disambiguating co-evolution and higher-level selection
• Co-evolutionary transitions in life and the environment

Format:

The workshop will be held over a full day. The overall aim is to foster discussion, stimulate new questions, and identify new lines of research in evolutionary biology. We hope that the workshop will be well-attended and welcome participation in the discussions from all attendees. We invite paper submissions from those who wish to present work or ideas in more depth. Most submitted papers will be presented by poster, but a small number of high quality papers will be presented orally. There will also be several invited talks from key researchers in the field. An important focus of the workshop will be a panel discussion in which a group of high profile researchers in evolutionary biology will debate questions put to them by the assembled delegates. It is hoped that this session will help to frame the most important questions in current evolutionary theory and highlight important avenues for future research. The panel debate is intended to be fully interactive and workshop attendees are encouraged to submit questions for discussion. Questions may be submitted by email to any of the organisers prior to the workshop or on the day. The full list of panellists will be announced closer to the event.

Speakers:

• Eors Szathmary (Collegium Budapest) Web
• John Odling-Smee (University of Oxford) Web
• Mark Pallen (University of Birmingham) Web
• More to be announced...

Program Committee:

• Eors Szathmary
• David Sloan Wilson
• Inman Harvey
• Takashi Ikegami
• Richard Watson
• Seth Bullock
• Jason Noble
• Tim Lenton

Submissions/Publication:

******** Paper Submission Closed ** Poster Abstracts Invited ********

The deadline for submission of full-length papers has now passed, but we re-iterate that presentation of a paper is not a criterion for attendance or participation at the workshop. We will continue to accept abstracts (no more than 2 pages) for poster presentations. Authors of accepted poster presentations may be invited to develop a full-length paper for future publication in a journal special issue. Abstracts should be submitted to Alex Penn. All submissions will be peer-reviewed. All accepted papers will be published as part of the conference Workshop Proceedings and in addition it is hoped that selected material from the workshop will form the basis for a special issue of a high-impact journal.

Contacts:

Alexandra Penn
asp@ecs.soton.ac.uk
University of Southampton

Hywel Williams
h.williams@uea.ac.uk
University of East Anglia

Chrisantha Fernando
c.t.fernando@cs.bham.ac.uk
University of Birmingham

Please get in touch if you have any queries. See you in Lisbon!

We are grateful to our sponsors: