David P. Mindell
Evolutionary Biologist & Author
“In this excellent book, David Mindell presents a new picture of evolution. He compellingly argues that decentralization brought about by horizontal evolution is indispensable for biological innovation. Highly recommended for anyone interested in quickly grasping the recent paradigm shift in evolutionary biology.”
“Mindell’s wide-ranging inquiry into the network of life is as mind-expanding as it is bold. Mindell does nothing less than trace the outlines of a new view of life and the implications of humanity’s coexistence with nature, technology, and an ever-changing planet. From bacteria to birds, from Aristotle to Emily Dickinson (and of course Darwin), the breadth of scholarship and integration of emerging concepts is breathtaking.”
“Exploring the intersection of human evolution and the history of life on Earth, The Network of Life asks us to envision the future of humanity and biological diversity in the context of the benefits and threats of an increasingly technological world. This is an expansive and stimulating book.”
“I’d always thought of evolution as primarily a matter of ‘descent with modification’—a treelike process, only sometimes interrupted by horizontal exchange. Lately, however, I’m coming to realize that the important events in evolution—those leading to evolutionary innovation—might well be the horizontal ones. This is a paradigm shift, and Mindell’s book is what finally convinced me.”
“Beautifully written, The Network of Life convincingly challenges the conventional vertical narrative of evolution. Full of novel ideas, this is a thought-provoking, iconoclastic book that will inspire many rich discussions in evolutionary biology.”
“Dr. Mindell is an excellent guide to this complex picture. . . . [The Network of Life] offers good, solid science and a clear illustration of an emerging perspective that is beginning to pay dividends in our understanding of evolution.”
“Eye-opening analysis. . . . The heady ideas [in The Network of Life] will change how readers understand some of biology’s most fundamental concepts.”
“A perspective-shifting reconceptualization of evolution.”
“I am quite sure that Darwin, were he alive today, would embrace this added view of evolution and would be foremost in its supporters. . . . The book is beautifully written and thought-provoking in myriad ways.”
“A perspective-shifting reconceptualization of evolution.”
Books
Themes from Books
Excerpt from Chapter 1 – The Network of Life: A New View of Evolution
“Evolution’s conventional narrative has long emphasized that new species arise by branching off from others. This was a foundational insight from Darwin: early examples of speciation as a branching process, with one species splitting into two or, in cases of a species radiation, more than two, include the mockingbirds and finches that Darwin studied on the Galapagos Islands.
A limiting aspect of the conventional evolutionary narrative is its inherent centralized view. In the conventional approach each new species receives all its genes, and all the features they encode, from a single parental species — one centralized source. Centralization is baked into the narrative based on branching tree diagrams, which show evolutionary relatedness, or genealogy. These phylogenies show single species splitting into two, over and over again. Our knowledge of evolution has progressed significantly since Darwin, however, revealing a great deal of horizontal evolution by means of horizontal gene transfer, species hybridization and other processes.
How does the new narrative differ? Evolution’s new narrative depicts common descent for all life’s species as a more decentralized network, where branches can both split and join. With a bit more imagination, the new narrative and net-work for all life are envisioned as a vast tangled system of streams, variously dividing, joining, meandering, and dividing again, as it carries and integrates species and their genes through time, with succeeding generations linked by currents and networks of heritability.”
Figure shows horizontal gene transfer into plants from bacteria, archaea, animals and fungi. Arrows begin at donor groups and point to recipient groups. Drawing is modified from Yue et al. 2012.
Excerpt from Chapter 2 – The Network of Life: A New View of Evolution
“As successful systems age, they risk obsolescence. Once new and daring, their ideas and implementation may become rigid and inefficient, falling out of sync with changing conditions. This can happen in systems of government, business, communication, and countless others, where the controlling factions and features fail to innovate and adapt over time. It happens in life’s evolution as well.”
“In saying life’s phylogeny – all its evolutionary relationships – is networked, and therefore decentralized to some degree, I am emphasizing the sharing of genetic materials outside the confines of parents and their progeny. For example, decentralization for plant evolution, by horizontal gene transfer into plants from non-plants, is shown in the figure to the right, along with the associated organismal innovations.
Decentralizing horizontal evolution, by any of multiple natural processes, brings the potential for significant and rapid innovation among life-forms. This has led to important innovations in the past, such as photosynthesis, the ability to metabolize oxygen, and transitions to multicellularity, among thousands of others. Focus on this source of rapid innovation for living systems is missing from the conventional narrative for evolution.”
Excerpt from Chapter 2 – The Network of Life: A New View of Evolution
We’re in a long- term relationship with technology. We can’t break up, even if we wanted to. We shape our technology and our technology shapes our culture and our minds. Technologies can be shared, horizontally, and applied by distant relatives or populations, without the need for physical transfer of any genes. This technology transfer among human populations and individuals, who can then change and adapt the technology, is a form of coevolution and, arguably, a form of horizontal evolution…
We are poised to give genes a much larger role in our future evolution, depending on our choices and success in pursuing technologies. Thousands of gene therapy trials are already underway. Though most aim to improve health, the methods have potential to enhance other traits, such as size, strength, and intelligence. Our technology for traveling and living beyond Earth also has potential to impact our biological evolution. Extraterrestrial environments with reduced gravity and increased radiation would impose their own selection pressures, and discussion has begun regarding possible human enhancement for future space missions by gene editing and implants.
…Imagine that future humans disperse and become interstellar voyagers and denizens. Doing so would be a natural extension of our incessant technological innovation as well as our exploration and dispersal activities across the face of Earth over the past 200,000 years. It then becomes conceivable that intelligent beings, descended from life on Earth (ourselves and perhaps other species), could evolve into a great diversity of forms, carrying life throughout the galaxy. In this fictional though long- term and evolutionary view, we are not now in the last chapter of humans’ or of life’s reign, but on the cusp of new opportunity.
Excerpt from Chapter 6 – The Evolving World: Evolution in Everyday Life
The value of evolution – specifically phylogenetic analyses – is well illustrated by the criminal case of the State of Louisiana v. Richard J. Schmidt. I worked with several other biologists involved in this case to provide DNA analyses and testimony, so I have familiarity with the details. The uncontested facts are that a gastroenterologist from Lafayette, Louisiana, broke into the home of his former mistress and office nurse late at night on August 4, 1994, and that he argued with her a gave her an intramuscular injection. He claimed it was a vitamin B shot. She claimed it was HIV. She began feeling ill several months after the injection and a blood test in the following January revealed that she had become infected with HIV…
She went to the District Attorney’s office to file charges on learning she was HIV positive. Moving quickly, the DA’s detectives obtained a search warrant and proceeded to the accused physician’s office, where they seized his record books for blood samples drawn from patients and a vial of blood sitting in the refrigerator in a back room in his office. The physician claimed this sample, drawn from one of his HIV-positive patients, was for his own use and research. Was the physician telling the truth? Might this book sample link the physician to the victim’s infection? Phylogenetic analyses of viral DNAs showing little or no relationship between HIV lineages from the nurse and the alleged source – the blood vial seized from the physician’s office – could help demonstrate the physician’s innocence, whereas a close, sister relationship among those lineages, in the context of an population sampling of HIV, would be consistent with the physician’s alleged role in transmission.
The bottom line is that the physician was found guilty of attempted murder and sentenced to fifty years in prison. The phylogenetic evidence was consistent with the prosecution’s overall case. On March 4, 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal of the verdict without review, thus establishing precedent for use of phylogenetic analyses in U.S. courts of law. The same court system that has been used by creationists to suppress the teaching of evolution in the 1920s and earlier has now developed a precedent in which one of evolutionary biology’s core principles and methods, phylogenetic analysis, is ruled admissible under the standards for criminal trials.
About David
David P. Mindell is a senior researcher at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley. He is an evolutionary biologist focused on systematics, molecular evolution, and the conservation of birds—especially raptors—and the big picture of life’s evolution.
His path began as a young naturalist and falconer and continued through an academic career of research and teaching evolution to undergraduate and graduate students. He previously served as professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan, director of the UM Museum of Zoology, and dean of science at the California Academy of Sciences.
For me, evolution has always been the most compelling story about humans and our natural roots – it is our own thriller. We are embedded in it, as it is embedded in us. New knowledge regarding the plot should be brought to light so we may better understand ourselves and our world.
– David P. Mindell
Media
Contact
info@davidpmindell.com