Moritz Wagner - Criticism

Criticism

Some modern experts such as Ernst Mayr, Jerry Coyne and H. Allen Orr, argue that Wagner pioneered the idea geographical speciation, and that Darwin had not appreciated it. However, Wagner's "migration theory" was based on a rather simple, Lamarckian idea of evolution. Wagner argued in letters to Darwin that the latter had missed a vital geographic component in understanding the evolution of new species. Darwin at first responded in a friendly way to these letters, and agreed that geographic isolation was important (although not the only cause of speciation), and pointed out that he had in fact dealt with geographic speciation in The Origin of Species. Wagner in his later articles totally rejected the importance of natural selection. He again pointed out the importance of intercrossing in preventing divergence, and thus for geographic separation in allowing divergence. Wagner argued that Darwin had not understood this, although these ideas are present in The Origin of Species. Darwin found Wagner's increasingly hysterical tone and one-sided argument upsetting, and wrote across his copy of Wagner's 1875 paper "most wretched rubbish."

As well as Darwin, the Reverend J.T. Gulick also found Wagner's theories overstated. Gulick was apparently responding to David Starr Jordan, who approved of Wagner's geographic speciation ideas in a paper which is often cited as providing early support of geographical speciation. Jordan later wrote a brief note of correction agreeing with some of Gulick's criticisms:

"Mr. Gulick corrects certain erroneous assumptions on the part of Dr. Moritz Wagner. Mr. Gulick says:

1. Separate generation is a necessary condition for divergent evolution but not for the transformation of all the survivors of a species in one way.
2. Separation does not necessarily imply any external barriers or even the occupation of separate districts.
3. Diversity of natural selection is not necessary to diversity of evolution.
4. Difference of external conditions is not necessary to diversity of evolution. Separation and variation—that is, variation not overwhelmed by crossing—is all that is necessary to secure divergence of type in the descendants of one stock, though external conditions remain the same and though the separation is other than geological. ...

All of this is in general accord with my own experience."

In a later paper Gulick says that "Moritz Wagner, in his 'Law of the Migration of Organisms,' was the first to insist on the importance of geographical isolation as a factor in evolution, but when he asserted that without geographical isolation natural selection could have no effect in producing new species he went beyond what could be sustained by facts".

Mayr's formulation has been argued to have cleared up issues which Wagner had left unresolved: "A new species develops if a population which has become isolated from its parental species acquires during this period of isolation characters which promote or guarantee isolation when the external barriers break down".p155 The zoological taxonomist Bernhard Rensch was also significant in keeping geographical speciation on the evolutionary menu. He identified geographical separation as the most frequent initial step towards cladogenesis (phylogenetic branching). However, a variety of species concepts compete with Mayr's isolation concept of species today, and so Mayr's account can no longer be accepted to be the gold standard.

The importance of Wagner's insight is highly debatable today, as it is clear that geographical isolation is not the only mechanism which causes species-splitting. Furthermore, it is generally accepted that natural selection is the most important cause of speciation, even when the geographical milieu is in isolation. There is room for debate as to whether Charles Darwin had reached a similar conclusion at the same time. The Origin of Species was published nearly twenty years after Wagner's first account, but more relevant is the evidence of his notebooks. The evidence of Darwin's notebooks (which were not published until the mid-20th century) shows a "clear description of reproductive isolation, maintained by ethological isolating mechanisms"p266; the same ideas are also present in The Origin of Species, but are often not recognized as such by modern biologists. On the other hand, there is no single example in the notebooks quite so clear as Wagner's flightless beetles. Much of the good in Wagner's ideas is masked by his other, mistaken, beliefs, but his inferences about geographical speciation were important insights gained by observation of insects in their natural habitats.

"It took more than 60 years after 1859 until the leading specialists... that this geographical approach was the way to solve the problem of speciation... a new species may evolve when a population acquires isolating mechanisms while isolated from its parent population.".

But again, see Sulloway's article.