 Various suggestions have been made about the evolutionary history underlying the multiple systems of inheritance that have been identified and about their role in the evolution of life. In general, epigenetic inheritance allows rapid response to inducing stimuli and may be more advantageous than mutation/selection cycles in specific types of fluctuating environments. This may be particularly important in small populations and diploid organisms, in which mutations are typically recessive (Nanney 1960). Maynard Smith and Szathmáry argued that evolution typically moves from limited to unlimited systems of inheritance or, to use their conceptual framework, from limited to unlimited hereditary replicators, and from holistic to modular replication (Maynard Smith &amp; Szathmáry 1995; Szathmáry 2000, 2015). This evolutionary trend is manifested in the major transitions in evolution to new levels of individuality (and new kinds of inheritance) that they have characterized. However, the co-existence of multiple systems of inheritance and its evolutionary significance is downplayed by such an account. Jablonka and Lamb (Jablonka 1994; Jablonka &amp; Lamb 2006), in contrast, emphasize the role played by inheritance systems other than the genetic, in particular by epigenetic inheritance, in evolutionary transitions. They place particular importance on the role of epigenetic inheritance in the evolution of multi-cellularity (see also Maynard Smith 1990; Nanney 1958, 1960; Shea et al. 2011) and in the evolution of the chromosome (Jablonka &amp; Lamb 2006). Nanney (1960) suggested that epigenetic inheritance played a role in cell specialization in unicellular populations (colonies), which conferred economic benefits to individual cells and enabled populations to survive environmental traumas due to their heterogeneity, prior to the emergence of true multi-cellularity. In addition, Jablonka (Jablonka 2001: 113) argues that with the evolution of repair and compensatory mechanisms inheritance systems become more limited. Two ways around the evolutionary stasis that would result are the move to higher levels of individuality (Jablonka 1994), and the transition to coded information. Ruth Sager (1966) suggested it may be adaptive to use inheritance systems minimizing variability to control traits that are crucial for survival.