Modern synthesis

The 20th-century framework that united Darwinian natural selection with Mendelian inheritance and population genetics, explaining evolution as changes in inherited variation within populations.

Mendelian inheritance: The principles describing how discrete hereditary factors pass from parents to offspring. It supplied the inheritance rules that Darwinian theory lacked.
Theodosius Dobzhansky: A geneticist whose work connected Mendelian genetics with evolutionary change in natural populations. His 1937 book helped establish the synthesis across genetics and field biology.
Speciation: The evolutionary process by which populations become distinct species. The synthesis explains species formation through divergence and reproductive isolation.
Lamarckism: An evolutionary theory that attributes adaptation to the inheritance of characteristics acquired during an organism’s life. The synthesis instead explained adaptation chiefly through inherited variation and selection.
Population genetics: The study of genetic variation and allele-frequency change within populations. It gave the synthesis a mathematical account of evolutionary change.
Genetics and the Origin of Species: Theodosius Dobzhansky’s 1937 book applying population genetics to evolutionary problems. It made genetic variation in natural populations central to the emerging framework.
Adaptive radiation: The diversification of a lineage into species adapted to different ecological niches. It illustrates how inherited variation and selection can produce diverse forms.
Neutral theory of molecular evolution: The theory that much molecular evolution results from random fixation of selectively neutral mutations. It challenged the assumption that most molecular change reflects natural selection.
Natural selection: A process in which heritable differences cause organisms to leave different numbers of offspring. The synthesis joined this Darwinian mechanism to genetic inheritance.
R. A. Fisher: A British statistician and geneticist who developed mathematical foundations for population genetics. His work showed how Mendelian inheritance could support gradual evolution by selection.

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