Forward genetics a bare minimum for the appearance of specific phenotypes. However, such initial screens were either incomplete as they were missing redundant loci and epigenetic effects, and such screens were difficult to undertake for certain phenotypes that lack directly measurable phenotypes. Additionally a classical genetics approach takes significantly longer. Gregor Mendel experimented with pea plant phenotypes and published his conclusions about genes and inheritance in 1865. Around the early 1900s Thomas Hunt Morgan was mutating Drosophila using radium and attempting to find heritable mutations Alfred Sturtevant later began mapping genes of Drosophila with mutations they had been following. In the 1990s
Genetics and the Origin of Species that give them a competitive advantage, and they have the best chance of surviving and procreating. The main element lacking in the theory was any mechanism that would allow organisms to pass on these favorable variations. Lacking such a mechanism, the theory of evolution faced competition from theories such as neo-Lamarckism, in which the environment acted directly on organisms, changing their structures. Darwin did not know that the monk Gregor Mendel was already working on experiments that would explain inheritance in terms of units of heredity that we now call genes. When Mendelian genetics was rediscovered by several scientists, it