Chance has been a focus of attention ever since the beginning of population genetics, but neutrality has not, as natural selection once appeared to be the only worthwhile issue. Neutral change became a major source of interest during the neutralist-selectionist debate, 1970-1980. It retained interest beyond this period for two reasons that contributed to its becoming foundational for evolutionary reasoning. On the one hand, neutral evolution was the first mathematical prediction to emerge from Mendelian inheritance: until then evolution by natural selection was considered the alternative to the fixity of species; now it appears to be the alternative to continuous change. Second, neutral change generated a set of clear predictions on standing variation. These could be used as a reference for detecting more elusive alternative mechanisms of evolution including natural selection. In the wake of the transition from Mendelism to genomics, the combination of coalescent theory, DNA sequence variation, and numerical analysis made it possible to integrate contingent aspects of the history of species into a new null model, thus opening a new dimension in the concept of population that the Modern Synthesis formerly considered as a mere gene pool.

中文翻译：

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机会、变异和共同祖先：综合后的种群遗传学

自种群遗传学开始以来，机会一直是关注的焦点，但中立性却不是，因为自然选择曾经似乎是唯一值得关注的问题。在 1970 年至 1980 年的中立主义-选择主义辩论中，中立的变化成为主要的兴趣来源。由于两个原因，它在这个时期之后仍然保持兴趣，这两个原因有助于它成为进化推理的基础。一方面，中性进化是从孟德尔遗传中出现的第一个数学预测：在此之前，自然选择的进化被认为是物种固定性的替代方案；现在它似乎是持续变化的替代方案。其次，中性变化产生了一组关于常态变化的明确预测。这些可以用作检测更难以捉摸的替代进化机制（包括自然选择）的参考。在从孟德尔主义向基因组学转变之后，聚结理论、DNA 序列变异和数值分析的结合使得将物种历史的偶然方面整合到一个新的零模型中成为可能，从而在概念上开辟了一个新的维度现代综合以前认为仅仅是基因库的人口。