Reactions to On the Origin of Species Owen's pre-eminence. To him, new species appeared at birth, not through natural selection. As well as attacking Darwin's "disciples" Hooker and Huxley, he thought that the book symbolised the sort of "abuse of science to which a neighbouring nation, some seventy years since, owed its temporary degradation." Darwin had Huxley and Hooker staying with him when he read it, and he wrote telling Lyell that it was "extremely malignant, clever & I fear will be very damaging. He is atrociously severe on Huxley's lecture, & very bitter against Hooker. So we three enjoyed it together: not that I really enjoyed
Genetics and the Origin of Species variation would allow populations to evolve rapidly as environmental conditions change. This book was a landmark in the evolutionary synthesis, as it presented the union of Mendelian genetics and Darwinian theory. In "Genetics and the Origin of Species", polyploidy is considered as a type of mutation. Polyploid cells have a chromosome number that is more than twice the haploid number. The effects of polyploidy between two different species causes hybridization and even greater evolution. Natural selection in an environment produces reproductive success, which benefits the species. Speciation is a process of evolution through which new biological species are formed. Dobzhansky