THE SPECIES AS A FIELD FOR 

 GENE RECOMBINATION 



HAMPTON L. CARSON: department of zoology, 



WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI 



The impact of genetics has reached into every corner of biol- 

 ogy. Nowhere has its influence been stronger than in the related 

 fields of taxonomy, speciation, and evolution. In fact, around the 

 fresh insight and new techniques provided by genetics has grown 

 a new science, which might be called experimental evolution. 

 Basically, its substance is derived from population genetics. 



Huxley's The New Systematics (1940) chronicled the effects 

 of genetic discoveries on taxonomy, ecology, paleontology and 

 geographical distribution. At the same time the groundwork 

 was laid for the revitalization of work on speciation. The same 

 period, that is, just before and during the early years of World 

 War II, witnessed the appearance of an extraordinary series of 

 broad works on evolution. Thus the books of Dobzhansky ( 1937), 

 Mayr (1942), Huxley (1942), and Simpson (1944) came in 

 rapid succession. What is remarkable about these works is not 

 their differences of opinion but rather their essential agreement 

 on basic principles. A modern synthetic theory of evolutionary 

 cause had apparently been crystallized. 



These key syntheses drew their freshness of approach largely 

 from the attention given to genetic phenomena; their function 

 was to integrate widely in evolutionary thought the major prin- 

 ciples established by the more strictly genetic and mathematical 

 fundamentals elaborated by the earlier works of Fisher ( 1930 ) , 

 Haldane (1932), and Wright (1932). It takes time for a synthe- 

 sis of this enormity, even in its barest outlines, to be evaluated 

 and digested and thus serve as a guide to future biological work. 

 One could hardly expect immediate wide dissemination of such 



23 



