Speciation and Adaptation
Speciation and Adaptation
Large-Scale Patterns in the Evolution of Life, 1972–
This chapter deals with the efforts to reinvent the concepts focusing on the origin of discrete species, which implies that these concepts must be essentially right. The 1970s and 1980s witnessed the period of “macroevolution”—referring to the rise of theoretical analyses of the nature of species and their supposed roles in an expanded evolutionary theory. Giambattista Brocchi's perception of species as parallel to individuals prompted the discourse in modern evolutionary biology; if species are discrete entities, they themselves can be seen as playing their own roles in evolutionary history. There is a possibility that speciation may be a factor in generating adaptive change—instead of assuming that adaptive change causes speciation, modern biologists speculate that it is the process of speciation that prompts adaptive change. The chapter presents how paleontology had as many real contributions to evolutionary theory as biology does.
Keywords: macroevolution, Giambattista Brocchi, species as individuals, modern evolutionary biology, speciation, adaptive change, paleontology
Columbia Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
