Nightranger
Senior Moment
Well, I suppose technically, a particular species is constantly having to face a new or modified environment, which in turn affects its evolutionary process. If I remember correctly, then evolution was traditionally regarded as proceeding at a relatively constant, slow process, but our old friend Gould hypothesised that in fact this slow pace was occasionally interrupted by bouts of vastly increased evolutionary pace (I know that's not the best way of stating it!). However, even these "speeded up" phases still happened at a pace that was too slow for our perceptions.
I suppose we just have to make the best of our particular window of opportunity, and collect as much data as we can, and formulate theories accordingly. But you're right, it doesn't make it any less interesting.
Absolutely correct. I am not sure that Gould had the vision to realise that the PE theory could happen over even shorter elements of time, which is a shame because there is so much merit in the idea. Gould was mostly talking about the fossil record (with particular reference to the Burgess Shales and horse lineage amongst other examples) but though Gould's theory is relatively new (less than 30 years old), it was not realised at the time that we were developing the tools to examine this. In Gould's defence, he was often accused of arguing against Darwin's Linear Progression but the reality was, he never argued against this but offered a companion theory. Had he lived longer, he may have been able to see how his theory was gaining some ground albeit, from areas that he could not have guessed.
Ian