Defending the importance of lineage-forming reproduction in evolution by natural selection

Charbonneau (2014) and Papale (2021) challenge the necessity of reproduction for evolution by natural selection (ENS) by contending that what really matter for ENS are memory and (re)generation at the population level, rather than lineage-forming reproduction at the local level. In this article, we critically evaluate their reproduction-independent accounts of ENS and defend the importance of lineage-forming reproduction in paradigmatic ENS on both empirical and theoretical grounds. We argue that none of the empirical cases they cite can be used as evidence to demonstrate the existence of paradigmatic ENS without lineage-forming reproduction, and adopting their reproduction-independent views would lead to an account of ENS that is both too liberal and too strict.