Frozen Evolution. Or, that’s not the way it is, Mr. Darwin. A Farewell to Selfish Gene.

The punctuated equilibrium model presented by Eldredge and Gould in the early seventies suggests that species usually evolve in a punctuated way – they develop their typical phenotype very quickly and for most of the time of their existence their phenotype remains stable or changes only very little. The theory of frozen plasticity 1) suggests a genetic mechanism for such an evolutionary stasis of species, 2) suggests a genetic and ecological mechanism of transition from a stable to a plastic state (different from all mechanisms suggested in the past thirty years by students of punctuated equilibrium, including Eldredge and Gould), and 3) suggests many nontrivial macroevolutionary, microevolutionary and ecological implications of the frozen plasticity theory.