Аннотация:During the last decade traditional morphological
paradigm of evolutionary biology has been
challenged. Molecular systematics and morphology-based
phylogenetics were considered as “advanced”
fields compared to the “old-fashioned” traditional
systematics. At the same time, an enormous body of
the practical and theoretical methods of “traditional”
biology was considered usually in a minimal degree.
It is here demonstrated that the current evolutionary
paradigm in the “phylogenetic era” lacks a theory of
how organisms change their shape. The links between
evolution, ontogeny, systematics and phylogenetics
are prima facie obvious, but similarly greatly
underestimated currently, though the field of “evo-devo”
is continuously growing. As a synthesis (or more exactly,
re-synthesis) of the still in considerable
degree independently developing major biological
fields, i.e. ontogeny, evolution and taxonomy, the new
conception of ontogenetic systematicsis therefore
suggested; the practical usefulness of the new concept
is illustrated by some examples from nudibranch
molluscs. Such re-formulation of apparently well-known
and obvious biological knowledge implies
also a great challenge for current phylogenetics and
systematics: an understanding of the necessity to
consider not only evolutionary “lines” and “branches”
of the “Tree of Life”, but also its cyclenature, since
ontogenetic cycles are indispensable and active parts
of the process of evolution.