Saltation (biology)

In biology, saltation is a sudden and comparatively large mutational change from one generation to the next, historically proposed as an alternative to Darwinian gradualism and, in principle, capable of producing a new species in a single step. Some versions of mutationism embraced saltational change, arguing that evolution could proceed through large discontinuous jumps rather than the gradual accumulation of small variations. Speciation through mechanisms such as polyploidy in plants can occur in a genuinely abrupt, single evolutionary step, and evidence for various saltational processes has been documented across a range of organisms.