Population Genetics and Evolution, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1988

At least since the 1940s neo-Darwinism has prevailed as the consensus view in the study of evolution. The mechanism of evolution in this view is natural selection leading to adaptation, working on a substrate of adapta­ tionally random mutations. As both the study of genetic variation in natural populations, and the study of the mathematical equations of selec­ tion are reckoned to a field called population genetics, population genetics came to form the core in the theory of evolution. So much so, that the fact that there is more to the theory of evolution than population genetics became somewhat obscured. The genetics of the evolutionary process, or the genetics of evolutionary change, came close to being all of evolutionary biology. In the last 10 years, this dominating position of population genetics within evolutionary biology has been challenged. In evolutionary ecology, optimization theory proved more useful than population genetics for interesting predictions, especially of life history strategies. From develop­ mental biology, constraints in development and the role of internal regula­ tion were emphasized. From paleobiology, a proposal was put forward to describe the fossil record and the evolutionary process as a series of punc­ tuated equilibria; thus exhorting population geneticists to give a plausible account of how such might come about. All these developments tend to obscure the central role of population genetics in evolutionary biology.

Introduction: The Place of Population Genetics in Evolutionary Biology.- Is Population Genetics Necessary for the Theory of Evolution?.- Population Genetics as a Core Theory.- The Necessity of Population Genetics for Understanding Evolution: An Ecologist’s View.- Unexploited Dimensions of Optimization Life History Theory.- Theory of Phenotypic Evolution: Genetic or Non-Genetic Models?.- Empirical Analysis of Sex Allocation in Ants: From Descriptive Surveys to Population Genetics.- Fitness and Mode of Inheritance.- Quantitative Genetics and Evolution.- The Maintenance of Genetic Variation: A Functional Analytic Approach to Quantitative Genetic Models.- Quantitative Genetic Models for Parthenogenetic Species.- Quantitative Genetics of Life History Evolution in a Migrant Insect.- The Evolution of Genetic Correlation and Developmental Constraints.- Models of Fluctuating Selection for a Quantitative Trait.- Development and Selection.- Components of Selection: An Expanded Theory of Natural Selection.- The Genetics of Information and the Evolution of Avatars.- Sib Competition as an Element of Genotype-Environment Interaction for Body Size in the Great Tit.- The Measured Genotype Approach to Ecological Genetics.- Is Population Genetics in Its Present Scope Sufficient for a Theory of Evolution?.- Adaptation.- What Is the Progress Towards Understanding the Selection Webs Influencing Melanic Polymorphisms in Insects?.- Ethanol Adaptation and Alcohol Dehydrogenase Polymorphism in Drosophila: From Phenotypic Functions to Genetic Structures.- Multigenic Selection in Plantago and Drosophila, Two Different Approaches.- The Functional Significance of Regulatory Gene Variation: The ?-Amylase Gene-Enzyme System of Drosophila melanogaster.- Population Structure.- Clonal Niche Organization in Triploid Parthenogenetic Trichoniscus pusillus: A Comparison of Two Kinds of Microevolutionary Events.- Microgeographic Variation of Genetic Polymorphism in Argyresthia mendica (Lep.: Argyresthiidae).- The Significance of Sexual Reproduction on the Genetic Structure of Populations.- Patch-Time Allocation by Insect Parasitoids: Superparasitism and Aggregation.- Developmental Constraints.- The Significance of Developmental Constraints for Phenotypic Evolution by Natural Selection.- Selection on Morphological Patterns.- Extrapolations.- The Evolutionary Potential of the Unstable Genome.- Consequences of a Model of Counter-Gradient Selection.