Saltacionismo

In evolutionary biology, Saltationism (from Latin, saltus, "leap") is a set of evolutionary theories which "holds that the evolution of species proceeds in major steps by the abrupt transformation of an ancestral species into a descendant species of a different type, rather than by the gradual accumulation of small changes.".

In other words, the evolutionary transformation of a species occurs suddenly which allows biological evolution to abruptly occur within an extremely short period of time. Saltationism is mainly the opposite of gradualism. Saltationism maintains the view that mutations build up rapidly in a species' gene pool, thus allowing total speciation to happen abruptly.

An example of saltationism in evolutionary thought was Goldschmidt's hopeful monster theory. Punctuated equilibrium was originally a form of saltationism, but was later declared a contemporary of Phyletic gradualism.