Leo W. Buss is a Professor in Yale University's departments of geology, geophysics, and ecology and evolutionary biology. He is also the author of the influential evolutionary developmental biology book The Evolution of Individuality (ISBN 0691084688). His book approaches the subject of the evolution of metazoan development from a cell lineage selection point of view. He reevaluates August Weismann's model of the cell compartmentalization of somatic and germline cell lineages (see Weismann barrier) and argues that the vision of the individual taken by the modern synthesis is insufficient to explain the early evolution of development or ontogeny.