Elastic, not plastic species: Frozen plasticity theory and the origin of adaptive evolution in sexually reproducing organisms

Table 2 Differences between predictions of the classical theories of evolution and frozen plasticity theory of evolution.

	clasical theory	frozen plasticity theory
anagenesis and cladogenesis **^{1, 2}	are independent	are coupled
divergence of species¹	does not correlate with taxon richness	correlates with taxon richness
genetic polymorphism **³	accelerates evolution	decelerates evolution
species respond to selection *⁴	plastically (as plasticine)	elastically (as ruber)
species are adapted to *⁵	current environment	original environment
local and global abundance **⁶	correlate for any species	do not correlate for old species
abundance of species	is independent of species age	decreases with species age
ability of species to respond to environmental changes **⁷	is independent of species age	decreases with species age
species on islands are derived *¹	as much as those on continents	more than those on continents
asexual species are*⁸	less adapted to their environment	more adapted to their environment
cross-pollinating species *⁹	as stable as self-pollinating species	more stable than self-pollinating species
invasive species **¹⁰	express average heritability	express higher heritability
domesticated species	express average heritability	express higher heritability
domesticated species	express average age	are evolutionarily younger
successful selection*¹¹	has no influence on fitness	decreases fitness
rate of anagenesis in a clade*	is (on average) constant	usually decreases
two species in the same niche*	usually cannot coexist	frequently can coexist
slow long-term trends*	are hardly possible	are quite possible

Two asterisks denote the predictions that have already been tested and support the frozen plasticity model. One asterisk denotes the predictions that have not been intentionally tested but are supported by published data. ¹[57], ²[58], ³[59, 60], ⁴[17], ⁵[61], ⁶[62], ⁷[45], ⁸[63, 64], ⁹[65], ¹⁰[66–68], ¹¹[69, 70]. For explanation see [46] and (Flegr J.: Microevolutionary a macroevolutionary implication of Frozen plasticity theory of adaptive evolution, submitted).

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