Evolutionary transitions in individuality: insights from transposable elements

• Evolutionary transitions in individuality give life its hierarchical structure.
• The same principles govern cooperation in the genome as at other levels of life.
• Data on transposable elements provides an empirical resource for the study of evolutionary transitions.
• These empirical observations may also expand the conceptual framework of social evolution.

The history of life has been characterised by evolutionary transitions in individuality, the grouping together of independently replicating units into new larger wholes: genes to chromosomes, chromosomes in genomes, up to three genomes in cells, and cells in multicellular organisms that form groups and societies. Central to understanding these transitions is to determine what prevents selfish behaviour at lower levels from disrupting the functionality of higher levels. Here, I review work on transposable elements, a common source of disruption at the genome level, in light of the evolutionary transitions framework, and argue that the rapid influx of data on transposons from whole-genome sequencing has created a rich data source to incorporate into the study of evolutionary transitions in individuality.