The molecular basis of punctuated equilibria: the roles of developmental genes in stasis and speciation

Abstract Although the theory of punctuated equilibria has stood the test of time, critics have sometimes highlighted the lack of a complementary molecular mechanism. The developmental gene hypothesis (DGH) provides just such a mechanism and is reviewed and significantly expanded in the present paper, taking advantage of concepts of active and passive evolvability, genetic drift, and the nearly neutral theory of molecular evolution, and compensatory adaptation in the face of weakly deleterious genetic variation. In addition, with the use of game theory, the author models the behavior of developmental regulatory (DevReg) genes, which are integral to the proposed hypothesis, in order to better understand their roles in stasis and speciation.