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
All I claimed was that when a drastic change occurs, it occurs in a relatively small and isolated population.
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.
Most modern authors failed to distinguish between two very different phenomena: the production of a new taxon, and the production of a new phenotype.
I agree with Gould that the frequency of stasis in fossil species revealed by the recent analysis was unexpected by most evolutionary biologists.
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.
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
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.
Given the fact of evolution, one would expect the fossils to document a gradual steady change from ancestral forms to the descendants. But this is not what the paleontologist finds. Instead, he or she finds gaps in just about every phyletic series.
Wherever we look at the living biota … discontinuities are overwhelmingly frequent…The discontinuities are even more striking in the fossil record. New species usually appear in the fossil record suddenly, not connected with their ancestors by a series of intermediates.
The reduced variability of small populations is not always due to accidental gene loss, but sometimes to the fact that the entire population was started by a single pair or by a single fertilized female. These 'founders' of the population carried with them only a very small proportion of the variability of the parent population. This 'founder' principle sometimes explains even the uniformity of rather large populations, particularly if they are well isolated and near the borders of the range of the species.
Indeed, I was unable to find any evidence whatsoever of the occurrence of a drastic evolutionary acceleration and genetic reconstruction in widespread, populous species.
In those early years in New York when I was a stranger in a big city, it was the companionship and later friendship which I was offered in the Linnean Society that was the most important thing in my life.