Hardy-Weinberg Principle

James L. Gould

Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection requires heritable variation for selection to work on. In Darwin's time, thinking about heritability centered on the idea of “blending inheritance”—the hypothesis that the offspring receive some average mix of the parental characters. If this were true, each generation would be more average than the last and variation would steadily decline. To make natural selection work, Darwin had to suppose that the frequency of mutations—“sports” as they were often called—was high. In 1900, the pioneering work of Gregor Mendel was independently rediscovered by Hugo De Vries, Carl ...

Users without subscription are not able to see the full content on this title. Please, subscribe or login to access all content on this website.