hugo marie de vries formemrs propounded the mutation theory of organic evolution.
hugo marie de vries formemrs propounded the mutation theory of organic evolution.
who propounded the mutation theory of organic evolution?
hugo marie de vries formemrs
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in his own time, de vries was best known for his mutation theory. in 1886, he had discovered new forms among a display of the evening primrose ("oenothera lamarckiana") growing wild in an abandoned potato field near hilversum, having escaped a nearby garden. taking seeds from these, he found that they produced many new varieties in his experimental gardens; he introduced the term mutations for these suddenly appearing variations. in his two-volume publication "the mutation theory" (1900–1903) he postulated that evolution, especially the origin of species, might occur more frequently with such large-scale changes than via darwinian gradualism, basically suggesting a form of saltationism. de vries's theory was one of the chief contenders for the explanation of how evolution worked, leading, for example, thomas hunt morgan to study mutations in the fruit fly, until the modern evolutionary synthesis became the dominant model in the 1930s. during the early decades of the twentieth century, de vries' theory was enormously influential and continued to fascinate non-biologists long after the scientific community had abandoned it. the large-scale primrose variations turned out to be the result of various chromosomal abnormalities, including ring chromosomes, balanced lethals and chromosome duplications (polyploidy), while the term mutation now generally is restricted to discrete changes in the dna sequence. however, the popular understanding of "mutation" as a sudden leap to a new species has remained a staple theme of science fiction, e.g. the x-men movies (and the comic books that preceded them).
hugo de vries