The Lost Evolutionary Synthesis

Do genes matter in evolutionary biology? In this lecture, we confront this odd question by telling the story of a forgotten branch of evolutionary theory. You'll meet a whole cast of characters you've never heard of before, and be introduced to the most practical subfield in biology - quantitative genetics. Timestamps 0:00 - Do genes matter? 4:10 - Wendel Mitchell Levi & The Pigeon 13:34 - Mendelian genetics 33:56 - Who was Francis Galton? 42:17 - Regression to the mean 48:59 - Law of Ancestral Heredity 56:44 - Who was Karl Pearson? 59:25 - Statistical selection theory 1:06:27 - Fisher (1918) & Deriving the infinitesimal model 1:35:00 - Implications of the infinitesimal model 1:40:40 - Jay Lush & Animal Breeding Plans 1:50:04 - Unifying population and quantitative genetics 1:56:20 - Efficiency of selection in the infinitesimal regime 2:01:20 - Conclusion References Barton, N. (2022) https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2122147119 Tautz, D. et al. (2026) https://academic.oup.com/genetics/advance-article/doi/10.1093/genetics/iyag024/8488818?guestAccessKey= Boyle, E.A. et al. (2017) https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30629-3 Barton, N. et al. (2017) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040580917300886 Hledick, M. et al. (2022) https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2123152119 Fisher, R.A. (1918) http://l.academicdirect.org/Horticulture/GAs/Refs/Fisher_1918_Correlation.pdf Robertson, A. (1960) https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article-abstract/153/951/234/30959/A-theory-of-limits-in-artificial-selection Pigeon genetics: https://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/pigeons/ Nick Barton on the infinitesimal: https://youtu.be/dz3YzaV4ZIA?si=k8qrzkx7Ep26IJ69 Subhadra Das on Galton: https://youtu.be/NPaalX30k7Y?si=JO4_VryHBNRcnOPS Fisher's fundamental theorem: https://youtu.be/8zIWf-dd398?si=II0RfzyXZ9XRU86q