Q.Who proposed the Germplasm theory? a) Darwin b) August Weismann c) Lamarck d) Alfred Wallace

Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck's 1809 theory ('Philosophie Zoologique') was the first formal theory of evolution, built on two principles: the theory of use and disuse (frequently used organs enlarge, e.g. the giraffe's neck; unused organs degenerate, e.g. limblessness in snakes), and the theory of inheritance of acquired characters (traits gained during an individual's lifetime are passed to offspring). August Weismann experimentally disproved the second principle by amputating mouse tails across twenty successive generations — every mouse was still born with a tail, showing that only changes to the germplasm (reproductive cells), not the somatoplasm (body cells), are heritable. Later **Neo-Lamarckist …