AP BIOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Theory of Acquired characters.. was disproved by August Weismann who conducted experiments on mice for twenty generations by cutting their tails and breeding them.

Detailed explanation-2: -Weismann therefore rejected the possibility of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, if those characteristics were changes which occurred in somatic cells. The theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics derived from work published by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in France in 1809.

Detailed explanation-3: -While Cuvier respected Lamarck’s work on invertebrates, he had no use for Lamarck’s theory of evolution, and he used his influence to discredit it.

Detailed explanation-4: -It was August Weisman whose experiment on mouse tail had disproved the theory of use and disuse of Lamarck. Further several genetic experiments had also confirmed the result of Weisman’s experiment.

Detailed explanation-5: -August Weismann (1834-1914) was a German evolutionary biologist who proposed a theory of the germ plasm, a precursor to DNA theory. The germ plasm theory suggests that acquired characteristics cannot be inherited.