The biggest thing in ecology right now is niche construction theory. It's the realization that organisms don't just respond to their environment, but also shape

The biggest thing in ecology right now is niche construction theory. It's the realization that organisms don't just respond to their environment, but also shape it and reproduce it I think it's high time for the equivalent perspective to reach evolutionary molecular biology and realize that organisms aren't just gonna sit idly by and wait for the random process of mutation to let them adapt. As shown by the recent studies on the prevalence of genes being shared across animals,[0] there's clearly many mechanisms of action missing from our molecular analysis toolbox. One recent finding was the discovery of epigenetic inheritance. If epigenetics allows organisms to adapt to environments in their lifetimes and these adaptations can, in some capacity, be passed down. In addition, we've already shown a number of factors to increase the rates of mutation. Given these findings, I don't think it's far-fetched to imagine some level of "~~niche~~[gene] construction" happening at the molecular level [0] https://www.quantamagazine.org/dna-jumps-between-animal-species-no-one-knows-how-often-20210609/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/dna-jumps-between-animal-spec...