One of the benefits of working at a university is that you encounter a different class of bumper sticker in the parking lot. This morning there was "HONK IF YOU UNDERSTAND PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIA!".
Oh, man, that is high-larious. My sides are still hurting.
Duh....
The essential features that make up Punctuated Equilibria are as follows:
Paleontology should be informed by neontology.
Most speciation is cladogenesis rather than anagenesis.
Most speciation occurs via peripatric speciation.
Large, widespread species usually change slowly, if at all, during their time of residence.
Daughter species usually develop in a geographically limited region.
Daughter species usually develop in a stratigraphically limited extent, which is small in relation to total residence time of the species.
Sampling of the fossil record will reveal a pattern of most species in stasis, with abrupt appearance of newly derived species being a consequence of ecological succession and dispersion.
Adaptive change in lineages occurs mostly during periods of speciation.
Trends in adaptation occur mostly through the mechanism of species selection.
nuf said!!!
Posted by: Winthrop B. Ungerstanding at 20.07.04 19:21Winthrop: you could've just honked. "Daughter species usually develop in a geographically limited region"- yeah, you can say that again!
Posted by: monk at 21.07.04 08:07