现代进化综论

简述

在1936年和1947年之间产生综论，反映演变如何进行的共识。起源是达尔文解释进化的天择理论，与孟德尔遗传定律的结合。同时也将基本的孟德尔遗传学，改造为数学化的群体遗传学。在很大程度上，综论仍然是在进化生物学目前的模式。

现代综合理论将两个重要发现结合，也就是进化选择单位（基因）与进化机制（天择）。也统合了许多生物学的分支，例如遗传学、细胞学、系统分类学、植物学与古生物学等等。

建立并发展现代综合理论的科学家，包括了数学家罗纳德·费希尔、生物学家休厄尔·赖特与J·B·S·霍尔丹，以及摩根、费奥多西·多布然斯基、朱利安·赫胥黎、恩斯特·麦尔、乔治·盖洛德·辛普森、斯特宾斯等人。

基本观点

现代进化综论将实验遗传学家、自然科学家、古生物学家的工作结合在一起，基本观点包括：

所有的进化现象都可以用一个将遗传机制和观察到的现象统一起来的方式来解释。

进化是渐进的：微小的变化在自然选择的作用下，经过长时间的积累；物种（性状）的不连续性可以用进化过程中的地理隔离和物种灭绝事件来解释

自然选择是目前为止主要导致变异的因素；微小的有利变异经过长时间积累也会导致显著的性状变化；自然选择影响物种在其生境中的表型

遗传漂变的作用不可忽视。

群体是进化的基本单位，而不是个体。自然群体的遗传多样性是进化的重要因子。在自然群体中，自然选择的作用比之前认为的更大。生态因子，比如生态位，以及基因流的作用很重要。

在古生物学中，从微观进化推演到宏观进化可以用来解释历史上观测到的一些现象。渐进主义并不等于进化的速率始终不变。

质疑

芝加哥大学生物化学与分子生物学系微生物学教授詹姆斯·夏皮罗声称现代综合论难以被用来解释近年新发现的一些进化现象。

The modern synthesis was the early 20th-century synthesis of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and Gregor Mendel's ideas on heredity into a joint mathematical framework. Julian Huxley coined the term in his 1942 book, Evolution: The Modern Synthesis. The synthesis combined the ideas of natural selection, Mendelian genetics, and population genetics. It also related the broad-scale macroevolution seen by palaeontologists to the small-scale microevolution of local populations.

The synthesis was defined differently by its founders, with Ernst Mayr in 1959, G. Ledyard Stebbins in 1966, and Theodosius Dobzhansky in 1974 offering differing basic postulates, though they all include natural selection, working on heritable variation supplied by mutation. Other major figures in the synthesis included E. B. Ford, Bernhard Rensch, Ivan Schmalhausen, and George Gaylord Simpson. An early event in the modern synthesis was R. A. Fisher's 1918 paper on mathematical population genetics, though William Bateson, and separately Udny Yule, had already started to show how Mendelian genetics could work in evolution in 1902.

Different syntheses followed, including with social behaviour in E. O. Wilson's sociobiology in 1975, evolutionary developmental biology's integration of embryology with genetics and evolution, starting in 1977, and Massimo Pigliucci's and Gerd B. Müller's proposed extended evolutionary synthesis of 2007. In the view of evolutionary biologist Eugene Koonin in 2009, the modern synthesis will be replaced by a 'post-modern' synthesis that will include revolutionary changes in molecular biology, the study of prokaryotes and the resulting tree of life, and genomics.

Definitions by the founders

The modern synthesis was defined differently by its various founders, with differing numbers of basic postulates, as shown in the table.