The proximate/ultimate distinction in the multiple careers of Ernst Mayr

Ernst Mayr's distinction between “ultimate” and “proximate” causes is justly considered a major contribution to philosophy of biology. But how did Mayr come to this “philosophical” distinction, and what role did it play in his earlier “scientific” work? I address these issues by dividing Mayr's work into three careers or phases: 1) Mayr the naturalist/researcher, 2) Mayr the representative of and spokesman for evolutionary biology and systematics, and more recently 3) Mayr the historian and philosopher of biology. If we want to understand the role of the proximate/ultimate distinction in Mayr's more recent career as a philosopher and historian, then it helps to consider hisearlier use of the distinction, in the course of his research, and in his promotion of the professions of evolutionary biology and systematics. I believe that this approach would also shed light on some other important “philosophical” positions that Mayr has defended, including the distinction between “essentialism: and “population thinking.”     

Ernst Mayr: Biologist-historian

Ernst Mayr's historical writings began in 1935 with his essay Bernard Altum and the territory theory and have continued up through his monumentalGrowth of Biological Thought (1982) and hisOne Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought (1991). Sweeping in their scope, forceful in their interpretation, enlisted on behalf of the clarification of modern concepts and of a broad view of biology, these writings provide both insights and challenges for the historian of biology. Mayr's general intellectual formation was guided by the GermanBildung ideal, with its emphasis on synthetic and comprehensive knowledge. His understanding of how to write history was inspired further by the example of the historian of ideas Arthur Lovejoy. Some strengths and limitations of this approach are explored here through attention to Mayr's treatment of the French biologist J.-B. Lamarck. It is contended that Mayr's contributions to the history of biology are not restricted to his own very substantial historical writings but also include his encouragement of other scholars, his development of an invaluable archive of scientific correspondence, and his insistence that historians who write about evolution and related subjects acquire an adequate understanding of the principles of Darwinian biology.This paper was originally delivered at the biennial meeting of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology, held in Brandeis in July 1993, in the special session organized by John Greene on Ernst Mayr's contributions to systematics, evolutionary theory, and the history and philosophy of biology. The paper is presented here with only slight modifications of the original, oral presentation. As indicated in the text, a full assessment of Mayr's historical work, including situating that work in the context of Mayr's other work and contemporary developments in the history of science, would require a much more extensive study than I have been able to undertake here.     

Plant response to climate change along the forest‐tundra ecotone in northeastern Siberia

Russia's boreal (taiga) biome will likely contract sharply and shift northward in response to 21st century climatic change, yet few studies have examined plant response to climatic variability along the northern margin. We quantified climate dynamics, trends in plant growth, and growth–climate relationships across the tundra shrublands and Cajander larch (Larix cajanderi Mayr.) woodlands of the Kolyma river basin (657 000 km²) in northeastern Siberia using satellite‐derived normalized difference vegetation indices (NDVI), tree ring‐width measurements, and climate data. Mean summer temperatures (T_s) increased 1.0 °C from 1938 to 2009, though there was no trend (P > 0.05) in growing year precipitation or climate moisture index (CMI_gy). Mean summer NDVI (NDVI_s) increased significantly from 1982 to 2010 across 20% of the watershed, primarily in cold, shrub‐dominated areas. NDVI_s positively correlated (P < 0.05) with T_s across 56% of the watershed (r = 0.52 ± 0.09, mean ± SD), principally in cold areas, and with CMI_gy across 9% of the watershed (r = 0.45 ± 0.06), largely in warm areas. Larch ring‐width measurements from nine sites revealed that year‐to‐year (i.e., high‐frequency) variation in growth positively correlated (P < 0.05) with June temperature (r = 0.40) and prior summer CMI (r = 0.40) from 1938 to 2007. An unexplained multi‐decadal (i.e., low‐frequency) decline in annual basal area increment (BAI) occurred following the mid‐20th century, but over the NDVI record there was no trend in mean BAI (P > 0.05), which significantly correlated with NDVI_s (r = 0.44, P < 0.05, 1982–2007). Both satellite and tree‐ring analyses indicated that plant growth was constrained by both low temperatures and limited moisture availability and, furthermore, that warming enhanced growth. Impacts of future climatic change on forests near treeline in Arctic Russia will likely be influenced by shifts in both temperature and moisture, which implies that projections of future forest distribution and productivity in this area should take into account the interactions of energy and moisture limitations.     

北京市华北落叶松优树群体遗传多样性分析

利用SSR分子标记对北京市华北落叶松人工林5个群体的220棵优树进行遗传多样性和群体结构分析。20对SSR引物共检测到81个等位基因,每个位点等位基因数2~8个不等,平均4.05个。群体观测和期望杂合度平均值分别为0.429和0.440,Shannon信息指数和多态性信息含量分别为0.756和0.380。5个群体中,百花山和云蒙山遗传多样性水平最高,雾灵山遗传多样性水平最低。AMOVA分析结果显示,2.65%的遗传变异来自于群体间,剩余97.35%的遗传变异来自于群体内。遗传分化系数仅为0.023,表明北京市华北落叶松优树群体遗传分化程度很低。基于Nei's遗传距离可以将5个群体划分为3个类群,四海镇和雾灵山归为第Ⅰ类,松山归为第Ⅱ类,百花山和云蒙山归为第Ⅲ类。STRUCTURE群体结构分析结果与上述聚类分析结果大体一致。以上研究为华北落叶松人工林遗传多样性评价和优良种质资源收集、保护和利用提供理论依据。     

The Ibis: Transformations in a Twentieth Century British Natural History Journal

The contents of the British Ornithologists' Union's journal, The Ibis, during the first half of the 20th century illustrates some of the transformations that have taken place in the naturalist tradition. Although later generations of ornithologists described these changes as logical and progressive, their historical narratives had more to do with legitimizing the infiltration of the priorities of evolutionary theory, ecology, and ethology than analyzing the legacy of the naturalist tradition on its own terms. Despite ornithologists' claim that the journal's increasing focus on "biology" represented a natural development after the preliminary phase of systematics and geographical ornithology, in fact a small group campaigned to bring the priorities of population ecology, behavior, and selection theory into the journal and British ornithology more generally. The problems involved in this transition highlight the importance of methodological and institutional context in determining and reinforcing appropriate research programs for ornithologists. Comparing the discipline-building rhetoric of moderns with the contents of the past illustrates how modern evaluations of 19th century research programs have been enmeshed in ornithologists' endeavors to forge new identities for traditional disciplines.     

Speciation on islands: what are we learning?

Systematics and the Origin of Species from the Viewpoint of a Zoologist has remained an essential text on the bookshelves of evolutionary biologists since it was first published. Here, I expand upon several topics touched upon by Ernst Mayr to look at how our thinking has evolved, and is evolving, with particular reference to molecular phylogenetic studies on islands. At the time of publication, apart from the fossil record, inferences of temporal trends or patterns could only be speculative, deduced from the distributions of species and the patterns that these present. Much like the subject material itself, evolutionary biology evolves as a discipline, with an increasing availability of tools and resources. The development of molecular phylogenetics and molecular markers has given biologists a new window on the past and, as such, the ideas and explanations of Mayr have become more accessible to testing. © 2008 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2008, 95 , 47–52.     

河北省华北落叶松河北群体遗传多样性分析

以来自河北8个群体共312个华北落叶松天然个体为材料,利用10对SSR引物对群体进行扩增,所得数据用于其遗传多样性和遗传结构的研究。结果表明:10对SSR位点共检测到42个位点,平均每个位点有4.2个等位基因,位点的等位基因数(Na)为2~6个。群体平均等位基因数为3.36,Shannon指数(I)平均为0.749,观察杂合度Ho为0.405、期望杂合度He为0.423,来自河北北部的围场台子水和吉字以及兴隆雾灵山的多样性水平最高,南部的阜平群体多样性水平最低。AMOVA分子差异分析显示3%的遗传变异存在于群体间,97%的遗传变异则存在于群体内,基因分化系数Gst仅为0.028,表明华北落叶松在河北的群体分化很低。聚类结果表明河北围场两个群体为一类,蔚县、隆化和涿鹿为一类,阜平和赤城为一类,兴隆雾灵山群体距离其他较远。多样性北部群体较高,南部较低,表明华北落叶松可能的衍化方向是从北向南,印证了北部可能是起源中心的结论。     

Threads that Guide or Ties that Bind: William Kirby and the Essentialism Story

Nineteenth-century British entomologist William Kirby is best known for his generic division of bees based on tongues and his vigorous defence of natural theology. Focusing on these aspects of Kirby’s work has lead many current scholars to characterise Kirby as an “essentialist.” As a result of this characterisation, many important aspects of his work, Monographia Apum Angliæ (1802) have been over-looked or misunderstood. Kirby’s religious devotion, for example, have lead some scholars to assume Kirby used the term “type” for connecting an ontological assumption about essences with a creationist assumption about species fixity, which I argue conceals a variety of ways Kirby employed the term. Also, Kirby frequently cautioned against organising a classification system exclusively by what he called “analytic reasoning,” a style of reasoning 20th century scholars often associate with Aristotelian logic of division. I argue that Kirby’s critique of analytic reasoning brought the virtues of his own methodological agenda into sharp relief. Kirby used familiar metaphors in the natural history literature – Ariadne’s thread, the Eleusinian mysteries, and Bacon’s bee and spider metaphors – to emphasise the virtues of building tradition and cooperation in the goals and methodological practices of 19th century British naturalists.     

Ernst Mayr—Intellectual leader of ornithology

Ernst Mayr (1904–), naturalist and ornithologist since his early youth, is one of the architects of the synthetic theory of evolution of the 1940s. His main contribution was the analysis of the origin of species, i.e. the causes of biodiversity. The historical roots of these ideas reach far back to the early 1920s, when the 19-year-old student suggested to his mentor, Dr. Erwin Stresemann (Berlin), the development for birds of a theory of geographical variation and of the species. During the 1930s, Mayr himself assembled data for a comprehensive analysis of geographical variation and speciation in birds, when he studied the rich collections of the Whitney South Sea Expedition from the islands in the Pacific Ocean. He described from this and other regions 27 new species and 445 new subspecies of birds, more than any other living ornithologist. He established the basic principles of island biogeography, discussed critically the former existence of landbridges and emphasized that, in zoogeographical studies, instead of fixed regions, it is necessary to think of fluid faunas. His theoretical framework included active jump dispersal of birds and other animals as well as various types of vicariance processes which had an effect on faunal differentiation. Although Mayr was not the originator of the biological species concept, he demonstrated its validity more convincingly than anyone else before and proposed a superior and concise definition of the biospecies which everybody adopted. He also initiated with various studies a period of renewed interest in the macrosystematics of birds.Communicated by F. BairleinDedicated to Professor Ernst Mayr in admiration and friendship on the occasion of his 100th birthday on 5 July 2004