Leo W. Buss (born 1953) is a retired Professor at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

's departments of

geology Geology (). is a branch of natural science concerned with the Earth and other astronomical objects, the rocks of which they are composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Earth ...

geophysics Geophysics () is a subject of natural science concerned with the physical processes and Physical property, properties of Earth and its surrounding space environment, and the use of quantitative methods for their analysis. Geophysicists conduct i ...

, and

ecology Ecology () is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their Natural environment, environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community (ecology), community, ecosystem, and biosphere lev ...

and

evolutionary biology Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes such as natural selection, common descent, and speciation that produced the diversity of life on Earth. In the 1930s, the discipline of evolutionary biolo ...

Life

He graduated from

Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...

with a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D in 1979. His

evolutionary developmental biology Evolutionary developmental biology, informally known as evo-devo, is a field of biological research that compares the developmental biology, developmental processes of different organisms to infer how developmental processes evolution, evolved. ...

book approaches the subject of the evolution of

metazoan Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the biological kingdom Animalia (). With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, have myocytes and are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and grow from a ho ...

development from a cell lineage selection point of view. He reevaluates

August Weismann August Friedrich Leopold Weismann (; 17 January 18345 November 1914) was a German evolutionary biology, evolutionary biologist. Fellow German Ernst Mayr ranked him as the second most notable evolutionary theorist of the 19th century, after Charl ...

's model of the cell compartmentalization of

somatic Somatic may refer to: * Somatic (biology), referring to the cells of the body in contrast to the germ line cells ** Somatic cell, a non-gametic cell in a multicellular organism * Somatic nervous system, the portion of the vertebrate nervous syst ...

and

germline In biology and genetics, the germline is the population of a multicellular organism's cells that develop into germ cells. In other words, they are the cells that form gametes ( eggs and sperm), which can come together to form a zygote. They dif ...

cell lineage Cell lineage denotes the developmental history of a tissue or organ from the fertilized egg. This is based on the tracking of an organism's cellular ancestry due to the cell divisions and relocation as time progresses. This starts with the origina ...

s (see

Weismann barrier The Weismann barrier, proposed by August Weismann, is the strict distinction between the "immortal" germ cell lineages producing gametes and "disposable" somatic cells in animals (but not plants), in contrast to Charles Darwin's proposed pangenesi ...

), and argues that the vision of the individual taken by the

modern synthesis Modern synthesis or modern evolutionary synthesis refers to several perspectives on evolutionary biology, namely: * Modern synthesis (20th century), the term coined by Julian Huxley in 1942 to denote the synthesis between Mendelian genetics and s ...

is insufficient to explain the early evolution of development or

ontogeny Ontogeny (also ontogenesis) is the origination and development of an organism (both physical and psychological, e.g., moral development), usually from the time of fertilization of the ovum, egg to adult. The term can also be used to refer to t ...

. He collaborated with Walter Fontana in producing some of the first papers on artificial chemistries.

Works

* ''The Evolution of Individuality'', Princeton University Press, 1987,
"Beyond Digital Naturalism"
''Artificial life: an overview'', Editor Christopher G. Langton, MIT Press, 1997,
"What would be conserved "If the tape were played twice?""
''Complexity: metaphors, models, and reality'', Editors George A. Cowan, David Pines, David Elliott Meltzer, Westview Press, 1999,
"Growth by Intussusception in Hyrdactiniid Hydroids"
''Evolutionary patterns: growth, form, and tempo in the fossil record in honor of Allan Cheetham'', Editors Alan H. Cheetham, Jeremy B. C. Jackson, Scott Lidgard, Frank Kenneth McKinney, University of Chicago Press, 2001,

References

External links

"Leo W. Buss"
''Scientific Commons'' 1953 births Living people Evolutionary biologists MacArthur Fellows Yale University faculty Researchers of artificial life {{biologist-stub