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Thomas Layman Poulson |
b. 1934; d.
Poulson, in the early 1960s, started to apply new ecological concepts to the
study of cave adaptation for amblyopsids, a fish family whose study had
largely been neglected since the times of Eigenmann. He took a closer look
at some of the adaptations to this environment such as metabolic rate, life
history, sensory morphology and foraging behavior, and tried to draw a
step-by-step description of that process from a holistic viewpoint by
comparing different species within the same family. This approach was in
tune with the neo-Darwinian view of evolution in which adaptationism and
gradualism play a major descriptive role (Poulson 1963, 1964). However, he
would later take a view that combined both neutralism and selectionism
when trying to explain the evolution of troglomorphic features (Poulson
1985). He viewed neutralism and selection as complementary and not
mutually exclusive for traits that show evolutionary reduction. His
approach was strongly comparative where different species of
amblyopsids, with different relative evolutionary time in caves, constitute
natural experiments. |
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