60 Quotes by Ernst Mayr

New gene pools are generated in every generation, and evolution takes place because the successful individuals produced by these gene pools give rise to the next generation.

I had found again and again that the most aberrant population of a species - often having reached species rank, and occasionally classified even as a separate genus - occurred at a peripheral location, indeed usually at the most isolated peripheral location.

Evolution thus is merely contingent on certain processes articulated by Darwin: variation and selection.

Living in an entirely different physical as well as biotic environment, such a population would have unique opportunities to enter new niches and to select novel adaptive pathways.

All I claimed was that when a drastic change occurs, it occurs in a relatively small and isolated population.

I did not claim that speciation occurs only in founder populations.

Most of them are doomed to rapid extinction, but a few may make evolutionary inventions, such as physiological, ecological, or behavioral innovations that give these species improved competitive potential.

It seems to me that for Darwin the pulsing of evolutionary rates was a strictly vertical phenomenon.

I have been unable to discover in Darwin's writings any connection between allopatric speciation and change of evolutionary rate.