Excerpt

Sewall Wright’s landmark 1932 paper highlighted the intricate nature of biological evolution and laid the groundwork for population genetics. Wright, along with Ronald Fisher and J. B. S. Haldane, is widely recognized as a founder of population genetics. These authors’ theoretical work paved the way for the modern evolutionary synthesis of the 1930–1940s (Provine 1971). Wright’s paper, presented at the 1932 International Congress of Genetics, aimed to explain his earlier mathematical theory (Wright 1931) in a clear, nontechnical manner (Provine 1986; Wright 1988). This paper made several significant contributions to our understanding of evolutionary processes.

Wright employed simple mathematical models to illustrate how mutation, selection, migration, and random genetic drift interact to drive population evolution. His work led to a greater appreciation of random genetic drift, formerly known as the “Sewall Wright effect,” and the role of population subdivision. Wright also emphasized the significance of inbreeding in small populations, which can increase homozygosity and reduce genetic variation. His models underscored the advantages of crossbreeding, or mating between different populations or species, as a way to introduce genetic variation and potentially enhance fitness. Wright proposed that crossbreeding could help populations counteract inbreeding depression and genetic drift. His ideas about the prevalence of nonadaptive genetic differentiation in natural populations were later expanded by Motoo Kimura (1983) in his Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution, forming the basis for modern statistical analysis methods of genetic variation (Griffiths et al. 2015).

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