It's not clear to me what you mean by that. Explain what you mean by 'bypassing natural selection altogether', and give me some examples. Also, what are the timescales involved in that (e.g. how many generations)?
This will take a bit of explaining so pardon the text wall.
The best way I can explain this in layman terms would be if other forces of evolution besides NS presented already well adapted variation then what need would there be for NS apart from confirming what has already been presented. In the SET natural selections role is to test variation against the environment. Shift through variation to weed out the unsuitable and find the suitable to fit an environment. So the variation presented is a population can be a mixture of beneficial and non-beneficial variations that need testing.
But unlike random mutations some of the forces with the EES present well suited and adaptable variation that help creatures fit into environments even before NS has a chance to test them. In that sense they bypass selections role of being the force that preserves them.
Developmental bias is one of the forces that can present well suited and adapted variation. Living organisms evolve with their environments and other living things. Development mechanisms can be activated by environments through tissue and cells which can them influence how genes are expressed and can produce these well suited and adapted variations because they are responses to the environmental pressures they live in. In other words developmental systems have an ability to be sensitive to environments and thus respond with changes to phenotype needed to fit those environments.
If you notice with developmental bias it only produces certain forms as opposed to any form. So in that sense evolution is not random in that any variation can be presented. The same certain forms are presented in all living things as a result of development processes and these are usually well suited and integrated rather than random and being any possible change and usually non-beneficial. This doesn't bypass NS but guides it, dictates what variation will be presented which is usually beneficial for NS to rubber stamp.
But as opposed to NS preserving any variation even if it may come at a cost to other functions the variations presented through development processes like bias are well integrated. So in that sense it bypasses NS because it is not a selection but a determination that happens regardless of selection role.
Another way NS can be bypassed is through
niche construction. Creatures are not adapted to environments but rather creatures change environments to suit them. In that sense it is the creature doing the selecting and not NS. Variations are usually conserved under niche construction. Examples are are aquatic worms who on land create aquatic environments by treating the soil in a way that produces a moist environment. This can also happen with insects and other creatures that can build nests, dams, burrows etc.
Obviously humans are the ultimate example in that they can create any environment or finding solutions to the many diseases and ailments we face therefore diminishing natural selections ability to direct and drive evolution. You could call niche construction artificial selection or self made selection.
Developmental plasticity which is a form of developmental bias can also bypass selection. Living things can respond to their environment by changing their form not because it is adapted by NS but because of the feedback between living things and environments. Even before any gene change has occurred which is a basis for evolution by natural selection so in that sense NS is bypassed in generating new forms. For example a leaf can change shape because of the composition of soil, water and chemistry.
Then there is
inclusive inheritance which works a bit like niche construction. This is where groups through culture, interactions between living things and parents and offspring can create beneficial environments that are more able to survive or thrive as opposed to become evolutionary unfit. This also includes epigenetics where the lifestyle of creatures fit or unfit can influence future generations. Examples can be how good diets will produce better offspring and how stress or poor diets can express genes in ways that make offspring even in future generations more prone to sickness or mental illness.
AS I said before you could say NS still plays a role in rubber stamping some of these variations but you can also say that some of these variations are deterministic and predictable. They are going to happen regardless of NS as they are selected by other mechanisms and are often most beneficial and suitable that there is no better alternative for NS to select. As opposed to NS increased role of testing and weeding out the environmental unfit to preserve the fit.
Examples for papers
In the EES, besides the expanded range of selection to multiple levels of organization, the generative properties of developmental systems are viewed as responsible for producing phenotypic specificity, whereas natural selection serves to release that developmental potential. (the rubber stamping, my comment)
Particular forms of phenotypic change are taken as the result of internal generative conditions rather than external pruning. Thus, a significant amount of explanatory weight is shifted from external conditions to the internal properties of evolving populations. In addition, natural selection may be ‘bypassed’ by environmental induction, causing potentially adaptive developmental variation in many individuals of a population at once and long before natural selection may become effective. (rather than through adaptive and selective evolution working on gene change development mechanisms produce certain predetermined forms, comments added by me).
Developmental bias may also contribute to the many examples of convergence across the tree of life. For example, cichlid fishes from Lakes Malawi and Tanganyika exhibit striking similarities in body shape, despite being more closely related to species from their own lake than to those from the other lake [17,33]. Such repeated parallel evolution is generally attributed to convergent selection. However, inherent features of development may have channelled morphology along specific pathways, thereby facilitating the evolution of parallel forms in the two lakes [17,33]. If so, then the diversity of organismal form is only partly a consequence of natural selection—the particular evolutionary trajectories taken also depend on features of development.
Another kind of developmental bias occurs when individuals respond to their environment by changing their form — a phenomenon called plasticity. For instance, leaf shape changes with soil water and chemistry. SET views this plasticity as merely fine-tuning, or even noise. The EES sees it as a plausible first step in adaptive evolution. The key finding here is that plasticity not only allows organisms to cope in new environmental conditions but to generate traits that are well-suited to them. n other words, often it is the trait that comes first; genes that cement it follow, sometimes several generations later5.
Does evolutionary theory need a rethink?
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