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.
Cited by¶
3 citations across 3 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.
SupportedVerified against the work's full text
Gould and Vrba observe that adaptation "has been defined and recognized by two different criteria: historical genesis" and current utility, and name "the potential confusion between these different definitions". They propose that features now enhancing fitness however they arose be called exaptations, with adaptation restricted "to features built by selection for their current role". That is the term and the repair the sentence credits to them. The paper says the authors propose the name rather than using the word coined that the sentence uses.
“Adaptation has been defined and recognized by two different criteria: historical genesis (features built by natural selection for their present role) and current utility (features now enhancing fitness no matter how they arose). Biologists have often failed to recognize the potential confusion between these different definitions because we have tended to view natural selection as so dominant among evolutionary …”
- 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.
- 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.
Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract
Gould & Vrba 1982 supplies the exaptation half of the claim — a feature co-opted for a role it did not arise for, including non-adapted features available for co-optation — but not the entrenchment clause.
“features that now enhance fitness but were not built by natural selection for their current role. We propose that such features be called exaptations and that adaptation be restricted, as Darwin suggested, to features built by selection for their current role.”
- 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.
Domain-specific¶
- Adaptive Reuse
- Exaptation has biology as its origin
SupportedVerified against the source
- Exaptation has biology as its origin
Verification¶
Does it exist? Confirmed. This work's DOI resolves to a registered record, which fixes its identity. That is all it fixes.
Does it back the claim? Read against the text for 3 of 3 citations: 2 supported, 1 supported in part. Each verdict is shown under its citation below, with what in the work backs the sentence.
Support is checked per citation rather than per work — the same source can be cited soundly in one article and wrongly in another. Per-citation recording began recently, so a citation with no recorded check is a gap in the record rather than evidence it went unchecked.
See how references were verified.
Registry ID ref:06b69615c5bd · see in the full table