Hologenesis: The last and lost theory of evolutionary change

Abstract

One of the most important theories of evolutionary change arising around the turn of the century, “hologenesis” proposed by Daniele Rosa, has often been misinterpreted and widely ignored, perhaps because of the lack of an English translation. In this paper we discuss the theory of the Italian zoologist, with an emphasis on its historical value and its links with current evolutionary thought. In particular, we detect four main themes within Rosa's work that can be referred to the current evolutionary debate: namely vicariance biogeography, the concept of species as individuals, the dichotomous branching of phylogenetic trees and the concept of apotypic and plesiotypic branches. The evident links between Rosa's hologenesis on the one hand and vicariance biogeography, panbiogeography, and Hennigian cladistics on the other, lead us tq the re‐evaluation of some aspects of Rosa's thought.