 A cathedral termite mount – a small animal with a very noticeable extended phenotype The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene is a 1982 book by British ethologist Richard Dawkins. In the book Dawkins starts from the ideas of his earlier book The Selfish Gene, which portrayed the organism as a survival machine constructed by its genes to maximise their chances of replicating. In a much more technical presentation than the earlier book, Dawkins devotes a significant portion of this work to an attempt to remedy incomprehension and rebut criticism of The Selfish Gene. ImageMetadata File history File links Download high resolution version (1704x2272, 703 KB) Summary Photo taken and supplied by Brian Voon Yee Yap. ...
ImageMetadata File history File links Download high resolution version (1704x2272, 703 KB) Summary Photo taken and supplied by Brian Voon Yee Yap. ...
Families Reticulitermes spp. ...
1982 (MCMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Ethology is the scientific study of animal behavior considered as a branch of zoology. ...
Richard Dawkins Clinton Richard Dawkins DSc, FRS, FRSL (known as Richard Dawkins; born March 26, 1941) is an eminent British ethologist, evolutionary theorist, and popular science writer who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. ...
The Selfish Gene is a somewhat controversial book by Richard Dawkins. ...
In biology and ecology, an organism (in Greek organon = instrument) is a complex adaptive system of organs that influence each other in such a way that they function as a more or less stable whole and have properties of life. ...
This stylistic schematic diagram shows a gene in relation to the double helix structure of DNA and to a chromosome (right). ...
In the main portion of the book, arguing that the only thing which genes control directly is the synthesis of proteins, Dawkins points to the arbitrariness of restricting the idea of the phenotype to apply only to the phenotypic expression of an organism's genes in its own body. Dawkins develops this idea by pointing to the effect that a gene may have on an organism's environment through that organism's behaviour, citing as examples caddis houses and beaver dams. He then goes further to point to first animal morphology and ultimately animal behaviour, which appears advantageous not to the animal itself, but rather to a parasite which afflicts it. Dawkins summaries these ideas in what he terms the Central Theorem of the Extended Phenotype: A representation of the 3D structure of myoglobin, showing coloured alpha helices. ...
The phenotype of an individual organism is either its total physical appearance and constitution or a specific manifestation of a trait, such as size, eye color, or behavior that varies between individuals. ...
Caddis fly: small moth-like insect having two pairs of hairy membranous wings and aquatic larvae, found near lakes and streams. ...
Species C. canadensis C. fiber Beavers are semi-aquatic rodents native to North America and Europe. ...
Comparative anatomy is the study of similarities and differences in organisms. ...
A parasite is an organism that spends a significant portion of its life in or on the living tissue of a host organism and which causes harm to the host without immediately killing it. ...
An animal's behaviour tends to maximize the survival of the genes 'for' that behaviour, whether or not those genes happen to be in the body of the particular animal performing it. In conducting this argument, Dawkins aims to strengthen the case for a gene-centred view of life, to the point where it is recognised that the organism itself needs to be explained. This is the challenge which he takes up in the final chapter entitled "Rediscovering the Organism." Dawkins considers the concept of the Extended Phenotype to be his principle contribution to evolutionary theory. The book was reprinted in 1999 with an afterword by the philosopher Daniel Dennett. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...
A speculative phylogenetic tree of all living things, based on rRNA gene data, showing the separation of the three domains, bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes. ...
1999 (MCMXCIX) was a common year starting on Friday, and was designated the International Year of Older Persons by the United Nations. ...
Daniel Dennett Daniel Clement Dennett (born March 28, 1942) is a prominent American philosopher. ...
See also
Ethical fitnessism, or fitnessism for short, is the ethic whose behaviour tends to be maximized as a result of natural selection, i. ...
External links - Review by Deron Stewart
- Dawkins' page on The Extended Phenotype
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