Abstract
Diversity and unity are the equally important and enthralling aspects of the living world. The virus of foot-and-mouth disease is a sphere 8–12 millimicrons in diameter. The blue whale reaches 100 feet in length and 150 tons in weight. Sequoia gigantea may weigh more than 6000 tons. Some bacteria grow at −23°C in saline pools in Antarctica, and others at 80–85°C in hot springs of Yellowstone Park. The distribution range of the mountain lion (puma) extended from Alaska to Patagonia, so that the animal lived in a great variety of climates and other conditions. Man is, of course, the truly cosmopolitan species, able to create environments suitable for himself not only on the earth but in cosmic spaces. By contrast, some species are very narrow specialists. Drosophila carcinophila develops only in the external nephric grooves beneath the flaps of the third maxilliped of the land crab Geocarcinus ruricola on the islands of Montserrat and Mona in the Caribbean. Drosophila endobranchia, a species not closely related to D. carcinophila, develops in the gill chambers of the same and an allied species of land crabs on Cayman Islands (Carson, 1971).
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© 1974 Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Dobzhansky, T. (1974). Chance and Creativity in Evolution. In: Ayala, F.J., Dobzhansky, T. (eds) Studies in the Philosophy of Biology. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-01892-5_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-01892-5_18
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