RT Journal Article
T1 Agency in Reproduction
T2 La agencialidad en la reproducción
A1 Nuño De La Rosa García, Laura
AB While niche construction theory and developmental approaches to evolution have brought to the front the active role of organisms as ecological and developmental agents, respectively, the role of agents in reproduction has been widely neglected by organismal perspectives of evolution. This paper addresses this problem by proposing an agential view of reproduction and shows that such a perspective has implications for the explanation of the origin of modes of reproduction, the evolvability of reproductive modes, and the coevolution between reproduction and social behavior. After introducing the two prevalent views of agency in evolutionary biology, namely those of organismal agency and selective agency, I contrast these two perspectives as applied to the evolution of animal reproduction. Taking eutherian pregnancy as a case study, I wonder whether organismal approaches to agency forged in the frame of niche construction and developmental plasticity theories can account for the goal-directed activities involved in reproductive processes. I conclude that the agential role of organisms in reproduction is irreducible to developmental and ecological agency, and that reproductive goals need to be included into our definitions of organismal agency. I then explore the evolutionary consequences of endorsing an agential approach to reproduction, showing how such an approach might illuminate our understanding of the evolutionary origination and developmental evolvability of reproductive modes. Finally, I analyze recent studies on the coevolution between viviparity and social behavior in vertebrates to suggest that an agential notion of reproduction can provide unforeseen links between developmental and ecological agency.
PB Wiley
SN 1520-541X
YR 2023
FD 2023-05-26
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/104097
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/104097
LA eng
NO Nuño de la Rosa, L. (2023) «Agency in Reproduction», Evolution and Development, 25(6), pp. 418-429. Disponible en: https://doi.org/10.1111/EDE.12440.
NO 2023 Acuerdos transformativos CRUE
NO Universidad Complutense de Madrid
DS Docta Complutense
RD 17 ago 2024