Frozen Evolution. Or, that’s not the way it is, Mr. Darwin. A Farewell to Selfish Gene.

Only a negligible fraction of sexually reproducing species at a given time (the species originated recently, for example, by peripatric speciation) are plastic. Most species behave as elastic in microevolutionary processes and as frozen in macroevolutionary processes. They respond to a minor environmental change by reversible change (accompanied by a decrease in fitness) and to a major environmental change by extinction rather than by evolutionary adaptation.