The Principle of Natural Selection and its Governing Interactions of Reproduction and Speciation: A Formal Framework for Reproductive Architecture and Ancestry

The Principle of Natural Selection and its Governing Interactions of Reproduction and Speciation: A Formal Framework for Reproductive Architecture and Ancestry

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Authors

Amelie McCoy 

Abstract

This paper presents a formal framework for reproductive architecture and ancestry across reproductive modes and speciation. Natural selection is defined as the generational propagation of heritable characteristics through varying inclusions and exclusions; characteristics that are not heritable do not propagate. A single general expression states one generational cycle: an inherited ancestry field is acted upon by epigenesis and carried forward by reproductive contribution, producing the ancestry field the next generation acts on. Setting the parameters of that expression yields five governing interactions, of asexual replication, facultative sexual reproduction, obligate sexual reproduction, hemiclonal reproduction, and speciation, resolving to four ancestry habits: full continuity, reduced continuity, integration, and hemiclonal continuity. Speciation partitions the ancestry field rather than being a habit of its own. The framework operates upstream of population-genetic models, specifying the reproductive and ancestral structures those models presuppose rather than tracking allele frequencies within them. The five governing interactions culminate in the Principle of Natural Selection: what is not heritable does not propagate; each completed generation therefore resolves to one ancestry habit in each ancestry field it produces. Repeated across generations, that cycle is evolution.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.32942/X2VD6S

Subjects

Life Sciences

Keywords

Evolutionary laws, Natural selection, Parthenogenesis, Hybridogenesis, Asexual reproduction, Epigenesis, Governing interactions

Dates

Published: 2026-09-07 08:49

Last Updated: 2026-10-30 13:37

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License

CC BY Attribution 4.0 International

Additional Metadata

Conflict of interest statement:
None

Data and Code Availability Statement:
Not applicable. This is a theoretical framework paper: no new empirical data were generated and no analytical code was used. All cited results are available in the published literature.

Language:
English

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