The extended evolutionary synthesis has changed the way biologists look at the evolutionary process. The prior theoretical view, known as the modern synthesis, viewed organisms as essentially passive participants in the process of evolution, while the extended evolutionary synthesis views organisms as being primary actors in their own evolution. However, translating this idea into the many facets of evolutionary biology is a long process.

In a recent paper, Blyth Institute director Jonathan Bartlett shows that the concept of evolutionary bet hedging could use an update from the extended synthesis. While the concepts from classical evolutionary bet hedging remain valid, the extended synthesis allows biologists to see bet hedging as a more direct and active process from the organism’s perspective, with mutation systems that provide mutations as evolutionary hedges directed towards likely future environments (rather than merely haphazard) and which lend towards stable hedges in the population against future environments.

The paper, “An Extended Evolutionary Perspective on Evolutionary Bet Hedging,” was published in Current Trends in Biological Science, a newer journal spearheaded by evolutionary biologist Peter Corning.