Herron, Matthew D., Seyed A. Zamani-Dahaj, and William C. Ratcliff. “Trait heritability in major transitions.” BMC biology 16, no. 1 (2018): 1-12.
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Increases in biological complexity and the origins of life’s hierarchical organization are described by the “major transitions” framework. A crucial component of this paradigm is that after the transition in complexity or organization, adaptation occurs primarily at the level of the new, higher-level unit. For collective-level adaptations to occur, though, collective-level traits—properties of the group, such as collective size—must be heritable. Since collective-level trait values are functions of lower-level trait values, collective-level heritability is related to particle-level heritability. However, the nature of this relationship has rarely been explored in the context of major transitions.