 Philosophers of science have long argued for the explanatory autonomy of biological explanations. Especially, they have criticized understanding biological explanation as similar to law-based accounts of explanations in physics (see Lange 2007). In contrast, scholars have argued that explanation in the biosciences often includes describing a mechanism that brings about a certain biological phenomenon (Bechtel &amp; Richardson 1993; Craver 2007; Bechtel &amp; Abrahamsen 2010; see also entry  mechanisms in science).  Especially evo-devo has been described as a paradigmatic mechanistic science, which – against the ultimate-proximate distinction – seeks to identify developmental mechanisms that can explain evolutionary change in phenotypes (Gilbert 2003; Hall 2012). This mechanistic approach is often flanked by mathematical models of various developmental patterns, from changes in gene regulatory networks to growth patterns of organisms, and by historical narratives on how organisms and species evolve (Jaeger &amp; Sharpe 2014; Winther 2015). However, besides the accepted centrality of mechanistic explanation for developmental evolution, a much-debated topic concerns what exactly a developmental mechanism is and how it functions in evolutionary explanation compared to standard explanations citing natural selection. 