From Linnaean Species to Mendelian Factors: Elements of Hybridism, 1751–1870

Müller‐Wille, Staffan; Orel, V.

doi:10.1080/00033790601111567

Cited by 45 publications

(17 citation statements)

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“…, Olby 1979, 1985, 1997; Callender 1988; Müller-Wille and Orel 2007) have argued that Mendel’s main motivation for the Hieracium (and Pisum ) experiments was his interest in hybridization and speciation rather than the inheritance of traits, and they proposed that Mendel stands in the tradition of earlier plant hybridizers like Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter (1733–1806) and Carl Friedrich Gärtner (1772–1850). Recently this “Mendel as a nongeneticist” view has received considerable attention in popular science books ( e.g.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Full Breadth of Mendel’s Genetics

Dijk

Ellis²

2016

Genetics

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Gregor Mendel’s “Experiments on Plant Hybrids” (1865/1866), published 150 years ago, is without doubt one of the most brilliant works in biology. Curiously, Mendel’s later studies on Hieracium (hawkweed) are usually seen as a frustrating failure, because it is assumed that they were intended to confirm the segregation ratios he found in Pisum. Had this been his intention, such a confirmation would have failed, since, unknown to Mendel, Hieracium species mostly reproduce by means of clonal seeds (apomixis). Here we show that this assumption arises from a misunderstanding that could be explained by a missing page in Mendel’s first letter to Carl Nägeli. Mendel’s writings clearly indicate his interest in “constant hybrids,” hybrids which do not segregate, and which were “essentially different” from “variable hybrids” such as in Pisum. After the Pisum studies, Mendel worked mainly on Hieracium for 7 years where he found constant hybrids and some great surprises. He also continued to explore variable hybrids; both variable and constant hybrids were of interest to Mendel with respect to inheritance and to species evolution. Mendel considered that their similarities and differences might provide deep insights and that their differing behaviors were “individual manifestations of a higher more fundamental law.”

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confidence: 99%

The Full Breadth of Mendel’s Genetics

Dijk

Ellis²

2016

Genetics

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“…Johannsen's concept of genotype was a descendant of the species concept as it had been discussed at least since Linnaeus. 158 It may be that the radical anti-essentialism and critique of typological thinking which was formulated so forcefully by Ernst Mayr and has been widely accepted among historians and philosophers of biology, has blinded their understanding of the distinction between genotype and phenotype as it was originally introduced by Wilhelm Johannsen. Mayr's claim that in population theory what is important is ''the individual, not the type'' 159 is misleading.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Sources of Wilhelm Johannsen’s Genotype Theory

Roll‐Hansen

2008

J Hist Biol

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This paper describes the historical background and early formation of Wilhelm Johannsen's distinction between genotype and phenotype. It is argued that contrary to a widely accepted interpretation (For instance, W. Provine, 1971. The Origins of Theoretical Population Genetics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press; Mayr, 1973; F. B. Churchill, 1974. Journal of the History of Biology 7: 5-30; E. Mayr, 1982. The Growth of Biological Thought, Cambridge: Harvard University Press; J. Sapp, 2003. Genesis. The Evolution of Biology. New York: Oxford University Press) his concepts referred primarily to properties of individual organisms and not to statistical averages. Johannsen's concept of genotype was derived from the idea of species in the tradition of biological systematics from Linnaeus to de Vries: An individual belonged to a group - species, subspecies, elementary species - by representing a certain underlying type (S. Müller-Wille and V. Orel, 2007. Annals of Science 64: 171-215). Johannsen sharpened this idea theoretically in the light of recent biological discoveries, not least those of cytology. He tested and confirmed it experimentally combining the methods of biometry, as developed by Francis Galton, with the individual selection method and pedigree analysis, as developed for instance by Louis Vilmorin. The term "genotype" was introduced in W. Johannsen's 1909 (Elemente der Exakten Erblichkeitslehre. Jena: Gustav Fischer) treatise, but the idea of a stable underlying biological "type" distinct from observable properties was the core idea of his classical bean selection experiment published 6 years earlier (W. Johannsen, 1903. Ueber Erblichkeit in Populationen und reinen Linien. Eine Beitrag zur Beleuchtung schwebender Selektionsfragen, Jena: Gustav Fischer, pp. 58-59). The individual ontological foundation of population analysis was a self-evident presupposition in Johannsen's studies of heredity in populations from their start in the early 1890s till his death in 1927. The claim that there was a "substantial but cautious modification of Johannsen's phenotype-genotype distinction" (Churchill, 1974, p. 24) from a statistical to an individual ontological perspective derives from a misreading of the 1903 and 1909 texts. The immediate purpose of this paper is to correct this reading of the 1903 monograph by showing how its problems and results grow out of Johannsen's earlier work in heredity and plant breeding. Johannsen presented his famous selection experiment as the culmination of a line of criticism of orthodox Darwinism by William Bateson, Hugo de Vries, and others (Johannsen, 1903). They had argued that evolution is based on stepwise rather than continuous change in heredity. Johannsen's paradigmatic experiment showed how stepwise variation in heredity could be operationally distinguished from the observable, continuous morphological variation. To test Galton's law of partial regression, Johannsen deliberately chose pure lines of self-fertilizing plants, a pure line being the descendants in successive g...

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“…Far from being a backwater, Mendel’s Moravia was an agricultural powerhouse. We now know that his attendance at the local agricultural society’s meetings was not a coincidence but the result of a strong influence on his work (Müller‐Wille, 2007; Müller‐Wille & Orel, 2007). The re‐discoverers and popularizers of Mendel’s work were equally committed to the coordinated use of basic and applied research.…”

Section: Plant Genetics and Plant Breeding Before World War Ii: A Modmentioning

confidence: 99%