Self-organising life history selection from replicating molecules to large multicellular sexual organisms

Lars Witting

During their evolution from molecular replicators over asexual unicellular prokaryotes and protozoa to multicellular sexual reproducers, biological lifeforms increased in size with heritable gene replication increasingly embedded in more organised replicating units. Natural selection theory did not explain this evolutionary unfolding for 150 years, consolidating Darwinian evolution as a contingent diversifying, rather than force-driven directional, process. I review population ecological theory that predicts directional self-organising life history selection by a universal mechanism across all major lifeforms. It shows that the selection of net energy for replication is a primary force that drives the evolution of the major lifeforms forward through the gradually unfolding population dynamic feedback selection of intra-specific interactive competition. Speciation, inter-specific competition, and local adaptation are additional forces that expand and support evolutionary diversity. I begin by discussing predictability in the historical development of natural selection theory, covering the macro evolutionary pattern of the major lifeforms, before I describe the self-organising selection. I close with a discussion on the rise and fall of the contingent evolutionary paradigm, showing that the existing lifeforms cannot evolve by diversifying contingency due to their Malthusian fitness. The contingent assumptions of traditional life history theory are therefore not truly contingent, but placeholders for the self-organising selection that created the major lifeforms from the origin of replicating molecules.