What is Evolvability?

This chapter discusses evolvability. Somewhere between 700 and 800 million years ago, in a protist lineage closely related to the living choanoflagellates, cell division resulted in cell aggregation. That lineage prospered and became a source for Metazoa: the lineage of multicelled animals. About 75 million years ago another experiment in collective life began: that of the volvocaceans. The founder of this lineage lived in shallow ephemeral ponds (if the ecology of its descendants is any guide). The volvocaceans are a good probe for investigating this problem, because there is a concrete hypothesis which explains the limits of volvox disparity. Recent literature on bacterial evolvability the focus has been on the evolution of mutation rates; in particular, whether elevated mutation rates show that there has been selection for increased mutation itself, or merely declining investment in error correction in impoverished environments. Hence it can be concluded that Evolvability is a property of a lineage.