Abstract
Ernst Mayr’s influence on philosophy of biology has given the field a particular perspective on evolution, phylogeny and life in general. Using debates about the tree of life as a guide, I show how Mayrian evolutionary biology excludes numerous forms of life and many important evolutionary processes. Hybridization and lateral gene transfer are two of these processes, and they occur frequently, with important outcomes in all domains of life. Eukaryotes appear to have a more tree-like history because successful lateral events tend to occur among more closely related species, or at a lower frequency, than in prokaryotes, but this is a difference of degree rather than kind. Although the tree of life is especially problematic as a representation of the evolutionary history of prokaryotes, it can function more generally as an illustration of the limitations of a standard evolutionary perspective. Moreover, for philosophers, questions about the tree of life can be applied to the Mayrian inheritance in philosophy of biology. These questions make clear that the dichotomy of life Mayr suggested is based on too narrow a perspective. An alternative to this dichotomy is a multidimensional continuum in which different strategies of genetic exchange bestow greater adaptiveness and evolvability on prokaryotes and eukaryotes.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
See Haffer (2007) for a detailed biography of Mayr’s life and work.
See Beurton (2002) for a discussion of the shifts in Mayr’s definition and their conceptual consequences.
This is a problem too for animal and plant species, but Mayr did his best to deal with it when discussing them.
Mayr mostly ignored asexual reproduction in animals (see Avise 2008).
This is surprising, because prokaryotes do not normally exhibit the cytoskeletal structures associated with tubulin and actin, and do not have genes for these proteins.
References
Adams KL, Wendel JF (2005) Polyploidy and genome evolution in plants. Curr Opin Plant Biol 8:135–141
Adl SM, Simpson AGB, Farmer MA et al (2005) The new higher level classification of eukaryotes with emphasis on the taxonomy of prokaryotes. J Eukaryot Microbiol 52:399–451
Amundson R (1998) Typology reconsidered: two doctrines on the history of evolutionary biology. Biol Philos 13:153–177
Andam CP, Williams D, Gogarten JP (2010) Natural taxonomy in light of horizontal gene transfer. Biol Philos (this issue). doi:10.1007/s10539-010-9212-8
Anderson E (1948) Hybridization of the habitat. Evolution 2:1–9
Anderson E (1949) Introgressive hybridization. Wiley, NY
Anderson E (1953) Introgressive hybridization. Biol Rev 28:280–307
Anderson E, Stebbins GL (1954) Hybridization as an evolutionary stimulus. Evolution 8:378–388
Andersson JO (2009) Gene transfer and diversification of microbial eukaryotes. Annu Rev Microbiol 63:177–193
Andersson JO, Doolittle WF, Nesbø CL (2001) Are there bugs in our genome? Science 292:1848–1850
Andersson JO, Hirt RP, Foster PG, Roger AJ (2006) Phylogenetic analyses of diplomonad genes reveal frequent lateral gene transfers affecting eukaryotes. Curr Biol 13:94–104
Arnold ML (2000) Anderson’s paradigm: Louisiana irises and the study of evolutionary phenomena. Mol Ecol 9:1687–1698
Arnold ML (2006) Evolution through genetic exchange. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Arnold ML, Bulger MR, Burke JM, Hempel AL, Williams JH (1999) Natural hybridization: how low can you go and still be important? Ecology 80:371–381
Avise JC (2008) Clonality: the genetics ecology, and evolution of sexual abstinence in vertebrate animals. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Bapteste E, O’Malley MA, Beiko RM et al (2009) Prokaryote evolution and the tree of life are two different things. Biol Direct 4:34. doi:10.1186/1745-6150-4-34
Barton NH (2001) The role of hybridization in evolution. Mol Ecol 10:551–568
Bendel M, Kienast F, Rigling D (2006) Genetic population structure of three Armillaria species at the landscape scale: a case study from Swiss Pinus mugo forests. Mycol Res 110:705–712
Bergthorsson U, Richardson AO, Young GJ, Goertzen LR, Palmer JD (2004) Massive horizontal transfer of mitochondrial genes from diverse land plant donors to the basal angiosperm Amborella. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 101:17747–17752
Beurton PJ (2002) Ernst May through time on the biological species concept—a conceptual analysis. Theory Biosci 121:81–98
Blaxter M (2007) Symbiont genes in host genomes: fragments with a future? Cell Host Microbe 2:211–213
Bock WJ (1994) Ernst Mayr, naturalist: his contributions to systematics and evolution. Biol Philos 9:267–327
Bromham L, Penny D (2003) The modern molecular clock. Nat Rev Genet 4:216–224
Burgess R, Yang Z (2008) Estimation of hominoid ancestral population sizes under Bayesian coalescent models incorporating mutation rate variation and sequencing errors. Mol Biol Evol 25:1979–1994
Burkhardt RW Jr (1994) Ernst Mayr: Biologist-historian. Biol Philos 9:359–371
Cain J (1994) Ernst Mayr as community architect: launching the society for the study of evolution and the journal Evolution. Biol Philos 9:387–427
Cain J (2009) Rethinking the synthesis period in evolutionary studies. J Hist Biol 42:621–648
Casteleyn G, Adams NG, Vanormelingen P, Debeer A-E, Sabbe K, Vyverman W (2009) Natural hybrids in the marine diatom Pseudo-nitzschia pungens (Bacillariophyceae): genetic and morphological evidence. Protist 160:343–354
Chung C (2003) On the origin of the typological/population distinction in Ernst Mayr’s changing views of species, 1942–1959. Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci 34:277–296
Cracraft J (2002) The seven great questions of systematic biology: an essential foundation for conservation and the sustainable use of biodiversity. Ann Mo Bot Gard 89:127–144
D’Alelio D, Amato A, Kooistra WHCF, Procaccini G, Casotti R, Montresor M (2009) Internal transcribed spacer polymorphism in Pseudo-nitzschia multistriata (Bacillariophyceae) in the Gulf of Naples: recent divergence or intraspecific hybridization? Protist 160:9–20
Dale C, Moran N (2006) Molecular interactions between bacterial symbionts and their hosts. Cell 126:453–465
Darwin C (1859) On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life (1st ed). John Murray, London
Dawkins R (2003) The devils chaplain: reflections on hope, lies, science, and love. Houghton Mifflin, Boston
Derelle E, Ferraz C, Rombauts S et al (2006) Genome analysis of the smallest free-living eukaryote Ostreococcus tauri unveils many unique features. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 103:11647–11652
Dietrich MR (1998) Paradox and persuasion: negotiating the place of molecular evolution within evolutionary biology. J Hist Biol 31:85–111
Dobzhansky T (1973) Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution. Am Biol Teach 35:125–129
Doolittle WF (2009) The practice of classification and the theory of evolution, and what the demise of Charles Darwin’s tree of life hypothesis means for both of them. Phil Trans R Soc B 364:2221–2228
Doolittle WF (2010) The attempt on the life of the Tree of Life: science, philosophy and politics. Biol Philos (this issue). doi:10.1007/s10539-010-9210-x
Doolittle WF, Bapteste E (2007) Pattern pluralism and the Tree of Life hypothesis. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 104:2043–2049
Doolittle WF, Zhaxybayeva O (2010) Metagenomics and the units of biological organization. BioScience 60:102–112
Dowling TE, Secor CL (1997) The role of hybridization and introgression in the diversification of animals. Annu Rev Ecol Syst 28:593–619
Dupré J (1993) The disorder of things: metaphysical foundations of the disunity of science. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Eldredge N (2005) Darwin: discovering the tree of life. Norton, NY
Ereshefsky M (1992) Eliminative pluralism. Philos Sci 59:671–690
Ereshefsky M (2010) Microbiology and the species problem. Biol Philos (this issue). doi:10.1007/s10539-010-9211-9
Fernholm B, Bremer K, Jörnvall H (eds) (1989) The hierarchy of life: molecules and morphologies in phylogenetic analysis. Elsevier, Amsterdam
Friesen TL, Stukenbrock EH, Liu Z et al (2006) Emergence of a new disease as a result of interspecific virulence transfer. Nat Genet 38:953–956
Giraud T, Refrégier G, Le Gac M, de Vienne DM, Hood ME (2008) Speciation in fungi. Fungal Genet Biol 45:791–802
Gladyshev EA, Meselson M, Arkhipova IR (2008) Massive horizontal gene transfer in bdelloid rotifers. Science 320:1210–1213
Glass NL, Dementhon K (2006) Non-self recognition and programmed cell death in filamentous fungi. Curr Opin Microbiol 9:553–558
Glass NL, Kaneko I (2003) Fatal attraction: nonself recognition and heterokaryon incompatibility in filamentous fungi. Eukaryot Cell 2:1–8
Goremykin VV, Salamini F, Velasco R, Viola R (2008) Mitochondrial DNA of Vitis vinifera and the issue or rampant horizontal gene transfer. Mol Biol Evol 26:99–110
Grene M, Depew D (2004) The philosophy of biology: an episodic history. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Guljamow A, Jenke-Kodama H, Saumweber H et al (2007) Horizontal gene transfer of two cytoskeletal elements from a eukaryote to a cyanobacterium. Curr Biol 17:R757–R759
Haffer J (2007) Ornithology, evolution, and philosophy: the life and science of Ernst Mayr 1904–2005. Springer, Berlin
Hagan JB (1999) Naturalists, molecular biologists, and the challenges of molecular evolution. J Hist Biol 32:321–341
Hart MW, Grosberg RK (2009) Caterpillars did not evolve from onychophorans by hybridogenesis. Proc Nat Acad Sci USA 106:19906–19909
Hart MC, Green DH, Bresnan E, Bolch CJ (2007) Large subunit ribosomal RNA gene variation and sequence heterogeneity of Dinophysis (Dinophyceae) species from Scottish coastal waters. Harmful Algae 6:271–287
Hawksworth DL (2001) The magnitude of fungal diversity: the 1.5 million species estimate revisited. Mycol Res 12:1422–1423
Heiser CB (1973) Introgression re-examined. Bot Rev 39:347–366
Hotopp JCD, Clark ME, Oliveira DCSG et al (2007) Widespread lateral gene transfer from intracellular bacteria to multicellular eukaryotes. Science 317:1753–1756
Hull DL (1994) Ernst Mayr’s influence on the history and philosophy of biology: a personal memoir. Biol Philos 9:375–386
Jenkins C, Samudrala R, Anderson I et al (2002) Genes for the cytoskeletal protein tubulin in the bacterial genus Prosthecobacter. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 99:17049–17054
Keeling PJ, Palmer JD (2008) Horizontal gene transfer in eukaryotic evolution. Nat Rev Genet 9:605–618
Kitcher P (1987) Ghostly whispers: Mayr, Ghiselin, and the ‘philosophers’ on the ontological status of species. Biol Philos 2:184–192
Koblmüller S, Duftner N, Sefc KM et al (2007) Reticulate phylogeny of gastropod-shell-breeding cichlids from Lake Tanganyika – the result of repeated introgressive hybridization. BMC Evol Biol 7:7. doi:10.1186/1471-2148-7-7
Kohn LM (2005) Mechanisms of fungal speciation. Annu Rev Phytopathol 43:279–308
Kondrashov FA, Koonin EV, Morgunmov IG, Ginogenova TV, Kondrashova MN (2006) Evolution of glyoxylate cycle enzymes in Metazoa: evidence of multiple horizontal transfer events and pseudogene formation. Biol Direct 1:31. doi:101186/1745-6150-1-31
Lan R, Reeves PR (2000) Intraspecies variation in bacterial genomes: the need for a species genome concept. Trends Microbiol 8:396–401
Lane CE, Archibald JM (2008) The eukaryotic tree of life: Endosymbiosis takes its TOL. Trends Ecol Evol 23:268–275
Lapierre P, Gogarten JP (2008) Estimating the size of the bacteria pan-genome. Trends Genet 25:107–110
Lawrence JG (2002) Gene transfer in bacteria: speciation without species. Theor Popul Biol 61:449–460
Legendre P (2000) Reticulate evolution: from bacteria to philosopher. J Classif 17:153–157
Lewens T (2009) Evo-devo and ‘typological thinking’: an exculpation. J Exp Zool (Mol Dev Evol) 312B:1–8
Lewontin RC, Birch LC (1966) Hybridization as a source of variation for adaptation to new environments. Evolution 20:315–336
Loftus B, Anderson I, Davies R et al (2005) The genome of the protist parasite Entamoeba histolytica. Nature 433:865–868
Mallet J (1995) A species definition for the modern synthesis. Trends Ecol Evol 10:294–299
Mallet J (2005) Hybridization as invasion of the genome. Trends Ecol Evol 20:229–237
Mallet J (2007) Hybrid speciation. Nature 446:279–283
Mallet J (2008) Hybridization, ecological races and the nature of species: empirical evidence for the ease of speciation. Phil Trans R Soc B 363:2971–2986
Mallet J (2010) Why was Darwin’s view of species rejected by twentieth century biologists? Biol Philos (this issue). doi:10.1007/s10539-010-9213-7
Mallet J, Beltrán M, Neukirchen W, Linares M (2007) Natural hybridization in heliconiine butterflies: the species boundary as continuum. BMC Evol Biol 7:28. doi:101186/1471-2148-7-28
Martin W (2005) Lateral gene transfer and other possibilities. Heredity 94:565–566
Martin AP, Costello EK, Meyer AF, Nemergut DR, Schmidt SK (2004) The rate and pattern of cladogenesis in microbes. Evolution 58:946–955
Maynard Smith J, Feil EJ, Smith NH (2000) Population structure and evolutionary dynamics of pathogenic bacteria. BioEssays 22:1115–1122
Mayr E (1942) Systematics and the origin of species from the viewpoint of a zoologist. Columbia University Press, NY
Mayr E (1945) Birds of paradise. Nat Hist Mag 54:264–276
Mayr E (1946) History of the North American bird fauna. Wilson Bull 58:3–41
Mayr E (1952a) Introduction. In: Mayr E (ed) The problem of land connections across the South Atlantic, with special reference to the Mesozoic. Bull Am Mus Nat Hist 99:85
Mayr E (1952b) Conclusion. In: Mayr E (ed), The problem of land connections across the South Atlantic, with special reference to the Mesozoic. Bull Am Mus Nat Hist 99:255–258
Mayr E (1953) Comments on evolutionary literature. Evolution 7:273–281
Mayr E (1959) Trends in avian systematics. Ibis 101:293–302
Mayr E (1961) Cause and effect in biology. Science 134:1501–1506
Mayr E (1963) Animal species and evolution. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Mayr E (1964) The evolution of living systems. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 51:934–941
Mayr E (1965) Classification and phylogeny. Am Zool 5:165–174
Mayr E (1968) Illiger and the biological species concept. J Hist Biol 1:163–178
Mayr E (1969) Footnotes on the philosophy of biology. Philos Sci 36:197–202
Mayr E (1972) Continental drift and the history of the Australian bird fauna. Emu 72:26–28
Mayr E (1981) Biological classification: toward a synthesis of opposing methodologies. Science 214:510–516
Mayr E (1982) The growth of biological thought: diversity, evolution, and inheritance. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Mayr E (1984) The contributions of ornithology to biology. Bioscience 34:250–255
Mayr E (1987) The ontological status of species: scientific progress and philosophical terminology. Biol Philos 2:145–166
Mayr E (1988) Toward a new philosophy of biology: observations of an evolutionist. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Mayr E (1989) A new classification of the living birds of the world. Auk 106:508–512
Mayr E (1990) A natural system of organisms. Nature 348:491
Mayr E (1991) More natural classification. Nature 353:122
Mayr E (1992) Darwin’s principle of divergence. J Hist Biol 25:343–359
Mayr E (1994) Reasons for the failures of theories. Philos Sci 61:529–533
Mayr E (1995) Darwin’s impact on modern thought. Proc Am Philos Soc 139:317–325
Mayr E (1996) What is a species, and what is not? Philos Sci 63:262–277
Mayr E (1998a) Two empires or three? Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 95:9720–9723
Mayr E (1998b) This is biology. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Mayr E (2001a) What evolution is. Basic Books, NY
Mayr E (2001b) What evolution is. Interview with Ernst Mayr. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/mayr/mayr_print.html
Mayr E (2001c) The philosophical foundations of Darwinism. Proc Am Philos Soc 145:488–495
Mayr E (2002) Interview with Ernst Mayr. BioEssays 24:960–973
Mayr E (2004a) What makes biology unique? Considerations on the autonomy of a scientific discipline. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Mayr E (2004b) The evolution of Ernst: interview with Ernst Mayr. Scientific American, July 6th. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-evolution-of-ernst-in
Mayr E (2004c [2000]) The grand old man of evolution (interview conducted by Shermer M, Sulloway FJ). Sceptic 8:76–82. Reprinted online at: http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/04-07-05
Mayr E, Bock WJ (1994) Provisional classifications v standard avian sequences: Heuristics and communication in ornithology. Ibis 136:12–18
Mayr E, Gilliard ET (1952) Altitudinal hybridization in New Guinea honeyeaters. Condor 54:325–337
McBreen K, Lockhart PJ (2006) Reconstructing reticulate evolutionary histories of plants. Trends Plant Sci 11:398–404
McLaughlin DJ, Hibbett DS, Lutzoni F, Spatafora JW, Vilgalys R (2009) The search for the fungal tree of life. Trends Microbiol 17:488–497
Mishler BD, Donaghue MJ (1982) Species concepts: a case for pluralism. Syst Zool 31:491–503
Moran NA (2006) Symbiosis. Curr Biol 16:R866–R871
Nakashima K, Yamada L, Satou Y, Azuma J, Satoh N (2004) The evolutionary origin of animal cellulose synthase. Dev Genes Evol 214:81–88
Novo M, Bigey F, Beyne E et al (2009) Eukaryote-to-eukaryote gene transfer events revealed by the genome sequence of the wine yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae EC118. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106:16333–16338
Parfrey LW, Barbero E, Lasser E et al (2006) Evaluating support for the current classification of eukaryotic diversity. PLoS Genet 2(12):e220
Patterson N, Richter DJ, Gnerre S et al (2006) Genetic evidence for complex speciation of humans and chimpanzees. Nature 441:1103–1108
Petersen RH, Hughes KW (1999) Species and speciation in mushrooms: development of a species concept poses difficulties. Bioscience 49:440–452
Presgraves DC, Yi SV (2009) Doubts about complex speciation between humans and chimpanzees. Trends Ecol Evol 24:533–540
Provine WB (1981) Epilogue (excerpt). In: Mayr E, Provine WB (eds) The evolutionary synthesis. Bull Am Acad Arts Sci 34:17–32 (pp. 25–32)
Raper JR, Baxter MG, Ellingboe AH (1960) The genetic structure of the incompatibility factors of Schizophyllum commune: the A-factor. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 46:833–842
Ricard G, McEwan NR, Dutilh BE et al (2006) Horizontal gene transfer from Bacteria to rumen Ciliates indicates adaptation to their anaerobic, carbohydrates-rich environment. BMC Genom 7:22. doi:10186/1471-2164-7-22
Richards TA, Dacks JB, Jenkinson JM et al (2006) Evolution of filamentous plant pathogens: gene exchange across kingdoms. Curr Biol 16:1857–1864
Richards TA, Soanes DM, Foster PG et al (2009) Phylogenomic analysis demonstrates a pattern of rare and ancient horizontal gene transfer between plants and fungi. Plant Cell 21:1897–1911
Richardson AO, Palmer JD (2007) Horizontal gene transfer in plants. J Exp Bot 58:1–9
Rieppel O (2010) The series, the network, and the tree: changing metaphors of order in nature. Biol Philos (this issue). doi:10.1007/s10539-010-9216-4
Rieseberg LH (1997) Hybrid origins of plant species. Annu Rev Ecol Syst 28:359–389
Rieseberg LH, Willis JH (2007) Plant speciation. Science 317:910–914
Rieseberg LH, Raymond O, Rosenthal DM et al (2003) Major ecological transitions in wild sunflowers facilitated by hybridization. Science 301:1211–1216
Ros VID, Hurst GDD (2009) Lateral gene transfer between prokaryotes and multicellular eukaryotes: ongoing and significant? BMC Biol 7:20. doi:10.1186/1741-7007-7-20
Rosewich UL, Kistler HC (2000) Role of horizontal gene transfer in the evolution of fungi. Annu Rev Phytopathol 38:325–363
Salzberg SL, White O, Peterson J, Eisen JA (2001) Microbial genes in the human genome: lateral transfer or gene loss? Science 292:1903–1906
Sanders IR (2006) Rapid disease emergence through horizontal gene transfer between eukaryotes. Trends Ecol Evol 21:656–658
Sapp J (2009) The new foundations of evolution: on the tree of life. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Schardl CL, Craven KD (2003) Interspecific hybridization in plant-associated fungi and oomycetes: a review. Mol Ecol 12:2861–2873
Schluter D (2009) Evidence for ecological speciation and its alternative. Science 323:737–741
Scholl EH, Thorne JL, McCarter JP, Bird DM (2003) Horizontally transferred genes in plant-parasitic nematodes: a high-throughput genomic approach. Genome Biol 4:R39
Seehausen O (2004) Hybridization and adaptive radiation. Trends Ecol Evol 19:198–207
Simpson AGB, Roger AJ (2004) The real ‘kingdoms’ of eukaryotes. Curr Biol 14:R693–R696
Smith ML, Bruhn JN, Anderson JB (1992) The fungus Armillaria bulbosa is among the largest and oldest living organisms. Nature 356:428–431
Smocovitis VB (1992) Unifying biology: the evolutionary synthesis and evolutionary biology. J Hist Biol 25:1–65
Smocovitis VB (1997) G. Ledyard Stebbins, Jr. and the evolutionary synthesis (1924–1950) (1997). Am J Bot 84:1625–1637
Sneath PHA (1975) Cladistic representation of reticulate evolution. Syst Zool 24:360–368
Sneath PHA (2000) Reticulate evolution in bacteria and other organisms: how can we study it? J Classif 17:159–163
Soltis PS, Soltis DE (2009) The role of hybridization in plant speciation. Annu Rev Plant Biol 60:561–588
Spratt BG, Hanage WP, Feil EJ (2001) The relative contributions of recombination and point mutation to the diversification of bacterial clones. Curr Opin Microbiol 4:602–606
Stanhope MJ, Lupas A, Italia MJ et al (2001) Phylogenetic analyses do not support horizontal gene transfers from bacteria to vertebrates. Nature 411:940–944
Stebbins GL (1959) The role of hybridization in evolution. Proc Am Phil Soc 103:231–251
Stebbins GL (1985) Polyploidy, hybridization, and the invasion of new habitats. Ann Mo Bot Gard 72:824–832
Syvanen M (1984) The evolutionary implications of mobile genetic elements. Annu Rev Genet 18:271–293
Syvanen M (1987) Molecular clocks and evolutionary relationships: possible distortions due to horizontal gene flow. J Mol Evol 26:16–23
Taylor JW, Jacobson DJ, Kroken S et al (2000) Phylogenetic species recognition and species concepts in fungi. Fungal Genet Biol 31:21–32
Walton JD (2000) Horizontal gene transfer and the evolution of secondary metabolite gene clusters in fungi: an hypothesis. Fungal Genet Biol 30:167–171
Weber M (2005) Philosophy of experimental biology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Wertz RE, Goldstone C, Gordon DM, Riley MA (2003) A molecular phylogeny of enteric bacteria and implications for a bacterial species concept. J Evol Biol 16:1236–1248
Whitman WB (2009) The number of prokaryotes on earth (and why we care). In: Presentation given at Dalhousie University, July 24
Williamson DI (2009) Caterpillars evolved from onychophorans by hybridogenesis. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106:15786–15790. doi:10.1073/pnas.0908357106
Winsor MP (2003) Non-essentialist methods in pre-Darwinian taxonomy. Biol Philos 18:387–400
Winsor MP (2006) The creation of the essentialism story: an exercise in metahistory. Hist Phil Life Sci 28:149–174
Woese CR (1996) Phylogenetic trees: Whither microbiology? Curr Biol 6:1060–1063
Won H, Renner SS (2003) Horizontal gene transfer from flowering plants to Gnetum. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 100:10824–10829
Zeyl C (2009) The role of sex in fungal evolution. Curr Opin Microbiol 12:592–598
Acknowledgments
This paper was presented at the Halifax 2009 meeting of the Questioning the Tree of Life Network, sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust. I am grateful to the audience there for comments and also to the B&P referees who helped me sort out several points and avoid a number of errors. I owe many thanks to John Dupré, Sabina Leonelli, the BMBF Study Group for Evolution and Classification in Biology, Linguistics and the History of Science, and the ISHPSSB 2009 audience for discussion of previous versions of this paper. I also gratefully acknowledge the British Academy, which funded the presentation of this paper in Brisbane at ISHPSSB. The research for all these versions was funded by the ESRC as part of its programme at Egenis, University of Exeter.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
O’Malley, M.A. Ernst Mayr, the tree of life, and philosophy of biology. Biol Philos 25, 529–552 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-010-9214-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-010-9214-6