Ernst Mayr
Ernst Mayr
Ernst Walter Mayr was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, philosopher of biology, and historian of science. His work contributed to the conceptual revolution that led to the modern evolutionary synthesis of Mendelian genetics, systematics, and Darwinian evolution, and to the development of the biological species concept...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth5 July 1904
CountryGermany
The major novelty of my theory was its claim that the most rapid evolutionary change does not occur in widespread, populous species, as claimed by Most geneticists, but in small founder populations.
Most of them are doomed to rapid extinction, but a few may make evolutionary inventions, such as physiological, ecological, or behavioral innovations that give these species improved competitive potential.
I did not claim that speciation occurs only in founder populations.
All I claimed was that when a drastic change occurs, it occurs in a relatively small and isolated population.
Evolution is no longer necessarily progressive; it no longer strives toward perfection or any other goal. It is opportunistic, hence unpredictable.
No longer is a fixed object transformed, as in transformational evolution, but an entirely new start is, so to speak, made in every generation.
I did not claim that every genetic change in a founder population is a genetic revolution. Evidently it requires a special constellation for the occurrence of a more drastic genetic reorganization.
I have been unable to discover in Darwin's writings any connection between allopatric speciation and change of evolutionary rate.
I agree with Gould that the frequency of stasis in fossil species revealed by the recent analysis was unexpected by most evolutionary biologists.
Most modern authors failed to distinguish between two very different phenomena: the production of a new taxon, and the production of a new phenotype.
In neither his definition nor the examples illustrating what memes are does Dawkins mention anything that would distinguish memes from concepts.
I feel that one species, mankind, doesn't have the right to exterminate
On Earth, among millions of lineages or organisms and perhaps 50 billion speciation events, only one led to high intelligence ; this makes me believe its utter improbablity.
There are a number of attributes of species and populations that are not of any particular selective advantage to any single individual in a population but that are of great advantage to the population as a whole.