Baldwin effect

Effect of learned behavior on evolution

In evolutionary biology, the Baldwin effect describes an effect of learned behaviour on evolution. James Mark Baldwin and others suggested that an organism's ability to learn new behaviours will affect its reproductive success and will therefore have an effect on the genetic makeup of its species through natural selection. It posits that subsequent selection might reinforce the originally learned behaviors, if adaptive, into more in-born, instinctive ones. Though this process appears similar to Lamarckism, that view proposes that living things inherited their parents' acquired characteristics. The Baldwin effect only posits that learning ability, which is genetically based, is another variable in / contributor to environmental adaptation. First proposed during the Eclipse of Darwinism in the late 19th century, this effect has been independently proposed several times, and today it is generally recognized as part of the modern synthesis.

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