The current debate over extending inheritance and its evolutionary impact has focused on adding new categories of non-genetic factors to the classical transmission of DNA, and on trying to redefine inheritance. Transmitted factors have been mainly characterized by their directions of transmission (vertical, horizontal, or both) and the way they store variations. In this paper, we leave aside the issue of defining inheritance. We rather try to build an evolutionary conceptual framework that allows for tracing most, if not all forms of transmission and makes sense of their different tempos and modes. We discuss three key distinctions that should in particular be the targets of theoretical and empirical investigation, and try to assess the interplay among them and evolutionary dynamics. We distinguish two channels of transmission (channel 1 and channel 2), two measurements of the temporal dynamics of transmission, respectively across and within generations (durability and residency), and two types of transmitted factors according to their evolutionary relevance (selectively relevant and neutral stable factors). By implementing these three distinctions we can then map different forms of transmission over a continuous space describing the combination of their varying dynamical features. While our aim is not to provide yet another model of inheritance, putting together these distinctions and crossing them, we manage to offer an inclusive conceptual framework of transmission, grounded in empirical observation, and coherent with evolutionary theory. This interestingly opens possibilities for qualitative and quantitative analyses, and is a necessary step, we argue, in order to question the interplay between the dynamics of evolution and the dynamics of multiple forms of transmission.

中文翻译：

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绘制生物传播图：一种经验、动态和进化的方法

当前关于扩展遗传及其进化影响的争论集中在向 DNA 的经典传递中添加新类别的非遗传因素，并试图重新定义遗传。传输因子的主要特征在于它们的传输方向（垂直、水平或两者）以及它们存储变化的方式。在本文中，我们将定义继承的问题放在一边。我们宁愿尝试建立一个进化的概念框架，它允许追踪大多数（如果不是所有）传播形式，并理解它们不同的节奏和模式。我们讨论了三个特别应该成为理论和实证研究目标的关键区别，并尝试评估它们之间的相互作用和进化动力学。我们区分了两种传播渠道（渠道 1 和渠道 2），两种传播时间动态的测量，分别是跨代和代内（耐久性和居住性），以及根据其进化相关性（选择性相关和中性）的两种类型的传播因素稳定因素）。通过实现这三个区别，我们可以在描述其不同动态特征组合的连续空间上映射不同形式的传输。虽然我们的目标不是提供另一种遗传模型，将这些区别放在一起并交叉它们，但我们设法提供了一个包容性的传播概念框架，以经验观察为基础，并与进化理论相一致。有趣的是，这为定性和定量分析开辟了可能性，