Papers Published

1. McShea, DW, PERSPECTIVE METAZOAN COMPLEXITY AND EVOLUTION: IS THERE A TREND?, Evolution; international journal of organic evolution, vol. 50 no. 2 (April, 1996), pp. 477-492, Oxford University Press (OUP) [doi].
   (last updated on 2024/04/18)

   Abstract:
   The notion that complexity increases in evolution is widely accepted, but the best-known evidence is highly impressionistic. Here I propose a scheme for understanding complexity that provides a conceptual basis for objective measurement. The scheme also shows complexity to be a broad term covering four independent types. For each type, I describe some of the measures that have been devised and review the evidence for trends in the maximum and mean. In metazoans as a whole, there is good evidence only for an early-Phanerozoic trend, and only in one type of complexity. For each of the other types, some trends have been documented, but only in a small number of metazoan subgroups.