ABSTRACT
Among the most important innovations in the history of life is the transition from single-celled organisms to more complex, multicellular organisms. Multicellularity has evolved repeatedly across the tree of life, resulting in the evolution of new kinds of organisms that collectively constitute a significant portion of Earth’s biodiversity and have transformed the biosphere. This volume examines the origins and subsequent evolution of multicellularity, reviewing the types of multicellular groups that exist, their evolutionary relationships, the processes that led to their evolution, and the conceptual frameworks in which their evolution is understood. This important volume is intended to serve as a jumping-off point, stimulating further research by summarizing the topics that students and researchers of the evolution of multicellularity should be familiar with, and highlighting future research directions for the field.
Chapter 13 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at https://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part Section 1|64 pages
Theory and Philosophy
part Section 2|84 pages
Aggregative Multicellularity
chapter 725|16 pages
Eukaryote Aggregative Multicellularity
part Section 3|94 pages
Clonal Multicellularity
chapter 11|20 pages
Group Maintenance in Clonal Multicellularity
chapter 12|22 pages
Group Transformation
part Section 4|108 pages
Life Cycles and Complex Multicellularity
part Section 5|16 pages
Synthesis and Conclusions