Reduced and Parasitic Lineages: Boundary Cases in the Structural Analysis of Lineage

Function in corpus

Extends the Lineage cluster's structural analysis to boundary cases — reduced, parasitic, and scaffolded lineage forms. Provides the discriminating framework needed for early-evolution cases where simple living/non-living distinctions break down, and where the corpus's account of inheritance must be applied to structurally thin or host-dependent continuity.

Details

Connected papers: Lineage Before Selection; Abiogenesis and the Origin of Lineage; Constraint Carriers Before Codes The lineage arc of IO establishes that selection presupposes lineage, that abiogenesis is the emergence of lineage-capable continuity, and that inheritance is operative constraint preservation rather than symbolic code transfer. But what counts as lineage when reconstructive burden is unusually thin, heavily scaffolded, or partly exported to another organized regime? This paper draws that boundary with structural precision.\n\nThe central claim: lineage does not require full reconstructive autonomy, but it does require lineage-indexed constraint transfer — the continuation must propagate constraints that are specifically indexed to the prior lineage, not merely re-induced under similar background conditions. This criterion excludes recurrent crystallization (where the same structure reforms under regenerated environmental conditions, with no lineage-indexed transfer) while affirming parasitic lineage as fully real: a parasite's continuation depends on a host's organized capacities, but it still propagates its own lineage-indexed constraints through that scaffolded environment.\n\nBetween full lineage and non-lineage sits what the paper calls reduced lineage: structural cases where inherited organizational package is thinner or more heavily scaffolded than in rich reconstructive cases, but where genuine lineage-indexed transfer still occurs. Prions are treated as the canonical boundary case — not as a settled paradigm, but as structurally indeterminate cases that demonstrate exactly why the reduced region must be recognized. They challenge any sharp binary between full lineage and mere recurrence.\n\nThe paper introduces no new biological primitives and does not revise the corpus's treatment of constraint or inheritance. Its contribution is taxonomic: a sharper structural map for difficult cases in early evolution, heredity, and biological dependence.

Availability

This paper is listed for orientation and dependency tracking. No public PDF or Zenodo record is linked yet.