The overextended phenotype

In a potentially influential article, Whitham et al. (2003) adopted the concept of the extended phenotype (Dawkins, 1982) to suggest a novel perspective on community genetics and evolution. Their purpose was to examine "how the extended phenotypes of genes have important consequences at community and ecosystem levels", keeping in mind "the ultimate consequence of heritable extended phenotypes" (p. 560): community evolution by natural selection. We take issue with two aspects of the interpretation of extended phenotypes (EPs) given by Whitham et al. (2003) and adopted elsewhere in the emerging literature of community and ecosystem genetics (references below). First, we clarify that the functional concept of the EP (sensu Dawkins, 1982) is, in an important sense, more precise than employed by recent authors. Second, natural selection of so-called `extended phenotypes' involves an unlikely mechanism of selection and instead implies the existence of adaptive `community phenotypes'.