Ernst Mayr (1904-2005): evolutionary leader, protagonist, and visionary.

It has been five years since Ernst Mayr, one of the most influential evolutionary biologists of the last century, passed away. Mayr's seminal work as a naturalist and, in particular, as a bird systematist allowed him to approach the species problem in a revolutionary way. As a leading architect of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, Mayr helped integrate Darwinian theory with the broad fields of systematics and genetics.

80 years of watching the evolutionary scenery.

J Genet

April 2005

Happy birthday: 80 years of watching the evolutionary scenery.

Science

July 2004

Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.

Interview with Ernst Mayr.

Bioessays

October 2002

Ernst Mayr Robert J O'Hara

THE BIOGEOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE SUPPORTING THE PLEISTOCENE FOREST REFUGE HYPOTHESIS.

Evolution

January 1986

Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138.

The prevailing explanation for the observed distributional patterns and areas of endemism of tropical forest organisms is the Pleistocene refuge hypothesis, which proposes that wide-ranging ancestral taxa were isolated into forest refuges during certain glacial periods, and that this isolation provided them with the opportunity to speciate. John Endler has recently argued that two predictions of the refuge hypothesis-that contact zones between vicars should be between refuges and that contact zones of rapidly reproducing butterflies should be wider than those of more slowly reproducing birds-are not borne out by the evidence. Endler therefore rejects the refuge hypothesis.