Masatoshi Nei

Evolutionary biology must acknowledge Masatoshi Nei for three outstanding contributions: 1) an advancement in the scientific status of the discipline, which has been made by \u201cmolecular evolutionary biology\u201d more quantitative through a set of statistical methods for studying genetic diversity, changes in DNA, neutral evolution, molecular phylogenies; 2) the application of Nei\u2019s evolutionary Genetic Distance to the phylogenetic tree of human populations, supporting the Out of Africa model of global dispersal; 3) the overall recognition of the central role of mutations in evolution and the idea that the changes in DNA are not just \u201craw material\u201d for the natural selection, but the main sources of innovation. Nei\u2019s alternative theory of evolution, intended as a process driven by mutation, seems biased by a narrow focus on molecular determination and tends to underestimate the large corpus of interdisciplinary evidence supporting the causal role of selective processes in evolution