The relationship between microevolution and macroevolution, and the structure of the extended synthesis

Hist Philos Life Sci. 2012;34(4):539-59.

Abstract

This article focuses on the relationship between microevolution and macroevolution. The main purpose is to argue that up to the present time in the consolidation of the evolutionary synthesis macroevolution has been always conceived as dependent on microevolution. Such dependence was very clear in the synthesis, but seems to have been left aside by later authors. Nevertheless, we show that the criticisms of the synthesis since the decade of the 1970s did not modify that general trend: the new perspectives reproduced the dependence of macroevolution on microevolution by means of strategies different than those appealed to by the traditional synthesis.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Biodiversity*
  • Biological Evolution*
  • Ecosystem
  • Evolution, Molecular*
  • Gene Frequency*
  • Genetic Fitness
  • Genetic Speciation
  • Genetics, Population*
  • Humans
  • Origin of Life
  • Phylogeny