Exaptation—a Missing Term in the Science of Form.

Gould, S. J., & Vrba, E. S. (1982). Exaptation—a Missing Term in the Science of Form. Paleobiology, 8(1), 4-15.

Type

Journal article

Intellectual base

Primary research

Year

1982

DOI

10.1017/s0094837300004310

Link

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0094837300004310

Cited from

biology_ecology, computer_science

Cited by

2 citations across 2 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Exaptation
  • The term was coined by Gould and Vrba (1982) to repair a confusion in evolutionary language: the word "adaptation" had been stretched to cover both traits shaped by natural selection for their current role and traits that merely happen to be useful for a role they were never selected to perform.

    This sourceCoins "exaptation" to separate traits shaped by selection for their current role from traits merely co-opted to it; supplies the origin/current-function decoupling, the three-part signature, the rejection of teleological "preadaptation," and the designed-in-versus-found diagnostic.

• Observable Surface Becomes Contract
  • The biological instance removes the designer entirely: an evolutionary spandrel is a trait that arose as an incidental by-product of another adaptation (the observable surface exceeding the original adaptive contract), and over evolutionary time downstream functions co-opt it — the spandrel becomes load-bearing through dependence formed by later structures, so it can no longer be freely modified.

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