Institute of Biology, University of Kassel, Heinrich-Plett-Str, 40, D-34109 Kassel, Germany.
Biol Direct. 2011 Jun 30;6:33. doi: 10.1186/1745-6150-6-33.
All living beings on Earth, from bacteria to humans, are connected through descent from common ancestors and represent the summation of their corresponding, ca. 3500 million year long evolutionary history. However, the evolution of phenotypic features is not predictable, and biologists no longer use terms such as "primitive" or "perfect organisms". Despite these insights, the Bible-based concept of the so-called "ladder of life" or Scala Naturae, i.e., the idea that all living beings can be viewed as representing various degrees of "perfection", with humans at the very top of this biological hierarchy, was popular among naturalists until ca. 1850 (Charles Bonnet, Jean Lamarck and others). Charles Darwin is usually credited with the establishment of a branched evolutionary "Tree of Life". This insight of 1859 was based on his now firmly corroborated proposals of common ancestry and natural selection. In this article I argue that Darwin was still influenced by "ladder thinking", a theological view that prevailed throughout the 19th century and is also part of Ernst Haeckel's famous Oak tree (of Life) of 1866, which is, like Darwin's scheme, static. In 1910, Constantin Mereschkowsky proposed an alternative, "anti-selectionist" concept of biological evolution, which became known as the symbiogenesis-theory. According to the symbiogenesis-scenario, eukaryotic cells evolved on a static Earth from archaic prokaryotes via the fusion and subsequent cooperation of certain microbes. In 1929, Alfred Wegener published his theory of continental drift, which was later corroborated, modified and extended. The resulting theory of plate tectonics is now the principal organizing concept of geology. Over millions of years, plate tectonics and hence the "dynamic Earth" has caused destructive volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. At the same time, it created mountain ranges, deep oceans, novel freshwater habitats, and deserts. As a result, these geologic processes destroyed numerous populations of organisms, and produced the environmental conditions for new species of animals, plants and microbes to adapt and evolve. In this article I propose a tree-like "symbiogenesis, natural selection, and dynamic Earth (synade)-model" of macroevolution that is based on these novel facts and data.
地球上所有的生物，从细菌到人类，都是通过共同祖先的后裔联系在一起的，代表了它们各自约 35 亿年进化历史的总和。然而，表型特征的进化是不可预测的，生物学家不再使用“原始”或“完美”生物等术语。尽管有了这些认识，但基于圣经的所谓“生命之梯”或 Scala Naturae 的概念，即所有生物都可以被视为代表各种程度的“完美”，而人类处于这个生物层次的顶端，直到大约 1850 年（查尔斯·邦尼特、让·拉马克等人），仍然在自然学家中很流行。查尔斯·达尔文通常被认为是建立了一个分支进化的“生命之树”。他 1859 年的这一观点是基于他现在得到充分证实的共同祖先和自然选择的提议。在本文中，我认为达尔文仍然受到“阶梯思维”的影响，这是一种在 19 世纪盛行的神学观点，也是恩斯特·海克尔著名的 1866 年“生命之树”的一部分，就像达尔文的方案一样，是静态的。1910 年，康斯坦丁·梅雷舍科夫斯基提出了一种替代的、“反选择主义”的生物进化概念，即共生理论。根据共生场景，真核细胞是从古老的原核生物通过某些微生物的融合和随后的合作在静态的地球上进化而来的。1929 年，阿尔弗雷德·魏格纳发表了他的大陆漂移理论，后来该理论得到了证实、修改和扩展。由此产生的板块构造理论现在是地质学的主要组织概念。在数百万年的时间里，板块构造和因此“动态地球”导致了破坏性的火山爆发和地震。与此同时，它创造了山脉、深海、新的淡水栖息地和沙漠。因此，这些地质过程破坏了大量生物种群，并为动物、植物和微生物的新物种创造了适应和进化的环境条件。在本文中，我提出了一个基于这些新事实和数据的树状“共生、自然选择和动态地球（synade）-模型”，作为宏观进化的模型。
