A change can be adaptively neutral, but this is different from uselessness.
Selection never operates on a group, only on the individuals in that group.
Selection acts on phenotype or, more generally, traits. These traits can be borne by species, organisms, cell lines, genes, or molecules. The gene is a handy bookkeeping unit for documenting changes. But the gene is not the only unit of change, and is, only rarely, a unit of selection. Most traits in an organism, for example, are emergent from an aggregate of genetic sequences, expressed in the context of the whole organism.
Gould makes a good case for the species as the Darwinian individual. I come from a developmental perspective, and see changes defined by physical and developmental constraints, long before they become available for Darwinian selection.
A change can be adaptively neutral but a change is not evolution. Evolution is the selection of changes. Without the selection aspect a neutral change is just that, a neutral change.
Selection acts on phenotype…..
Dawkins defines a “gene” rather oddly. He uses the word to mean the entire set of genes (in the normal usage of the word) that, acting together, produce a trait that can be selected. Thus, Dawkins has no trouble with a statement like “The gene for running fast in a cheetah…”.
I really wish that he had come up with a better word, using the word “gene” in this manner creates confusion.
I come from a developmental perspective, and see changes defined by physical and developmental constraints, long before they become available for Darwinian selection.
You make a very good point here, but the only change that is not available for selection is a neutral change. “changes defined by physical and developmental constraints” are subject to selection, that is, the physical and development constraints select (allow) only changes that are not harmful (lethal) to the organism. I readily agree that a series of neutral changes may interact and then be subject to selection.
Gould makes a good case for the species as the Darwinian individual
I have read a lot of Gould, but I don’t recall this particular argument. I would be very interested in reading it if you could provide a reference.