Abstract
During the last 10 years evolutionary biology has entered a period of expanding theoretical scope following about two decades of rather settled satisfaction with the “modern” or “neo-Darwinian” synthesis. The modern synthesis is characterized, perhaps above all else, both by the elaboration of mathematical structures to describe the genetic diversity and response to natural selection in populations and by a qualitative focus on the properties of species and the process of speciation. The mathematical models of microevolution explored prior to 1970 usually incorporate relatively simple Mendelian genetic descriptions and ecologically simple selection regimes. The focus on species in the modern synthesis brought a much clearer conception of the biological nature of species and some easily grasped, heuristic, models of allopatric and sympatric speciation.
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Istock, C.A. (1982). Some Theoretical Considerations Concerning Life History Evolution. In: Dingle, H., Hegmann, J.P. (eds) Evolution and Genetics of Life Histories. Proceedings in Life Sciences. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-6270-8_2
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