ABSTRACT

Ocklenburg et al. (2020, Laterality 2020: Entering the next decade. Laterality) provided the field of laterality research with a stimulating research perspective for the coming decade, based on the current state of the art in both animal and human laterality research. Although this is paper takes many different approaches of laterality into account, we emphasize that the eco-evolutionary approach needs more attention. This concerns the question why organisms are lateralized in the first place, in other words, how does lateralization enhance the Darwinian fitness of the individual. We argue that laterality can be distinguished along four dimensions, and that each of them requires different ultimate explanations. Studying these functional and evolutionary explanations requires the development of ecologically relevant tests, adapted to the species at hand. It also requires experimental manipulation of laterality, testing the effect in (semi)-natural conditions on fitness parameters. Tools for such manipulation of laterality urgently require a better understanding of the developmental plasticity of lateralization, extending the field of evo-devo to that of eco-evo-devo. We also warn against seeing the minority in the distribution of direction or strength of lateralization as being a pathology as such minorities in biology can often be explained as adaptations by natural frequency dependent selection.

摘要

奥克伦堡等。( 2020 , 横向 2020: 进入下一个十年。横向）基于动物和人类侧向研究的当前状态，为未来十年的侧向研究领域提供了令人兴奋的研究前景。尽管本文考虑了许多不同的侧向性方法，但我们强调生态进化方法需要更多关注。这首先涉及为什么生物体被侧化的问题，换句话说，侧化如何增强个体的达尔文适应度。我们认为可以从四个维度区分偏侧性，并且每个维度都需要不同的最终解释。研究这些功能和进化解释需要开发适应手头物种的生态相关测试。它还需要对偏侧性进行实验操作，测试在（半）自然条件下对健身参数的影响。这种操纵侧向性的工具迫切需要更好地了解侧向化的发育可塑性，将 evo-devo 的领域扩展到生态 evo-devo 的领域。我们还警告不要将偏侧化方向或强度分布中的少数派视为病理学，因为生物学中的此类少数派通常可以解释为自然频率依赖性选择的适应。