23 papers · ranked by Valyu relevance
Scott A Pavey, Hélène Collin, Patrik Nosil, Sean M Rogers
Ecological speciation is the process by which barriers to gene flow between populations evolve due to adaptive divergence via natural selection. A relatively unexplored area in ecological speciation is the role of gene expression. Gene expression may be associated with ecologically important phenotypes not evident from…
Gary A Wellborn, R Brian Langerhans
The tenet that ecological opportunity drives adaptive diversification has been central to theories of speciation since Darwin, yet no widely accepted definition or mechanistic framework for the concept currently exists. We propose a definition for ecological opportunity that provides an explicit mechanism for its…
Graham Bell
One of the most familiar features of the natural world is that most animals and plants fall into distinct categories known as species. The attempt to understand the nature of species and the origin of new species was the enterprise that drove the early development of evolutionary biology and has continued to be a major…
Eduardo Ruiz-Sanchez, Chelsea D. Specht, William J. Etges
The hypothesis of ecological speciation states that as populations diverge in different niches, reproductive isolation evolves as a by-product of adaptation to these different environments. In this context, we used Nolina parviflora as a model to test if this species evolved via ecological speciation and to explore…
Benjamin J. M. Jarrett, Philip A. Downing, Erik I. Svensson
Reproductive isolation is a key process during speciation, but the factors that shape its evolution during the early stages of speciation remain largely unknown. Using a meta-analysis of 34 experimental speciation studies, we show that populations that experience divergent selection evolved stronger reproductive…
Johanna Ambu, Spartak N Litvinchuk, Carlos Caballero-Díaz, Alfredo Nicieza + 11 more
Speciation, i.e., the formation of new species, implies that diverging populations evolve genetic and phenotypic factors that promote reproductive isolation (RI), but the adaptive vs. neutral origin of these factors and their relative contributions across the speciation continuum remain elusive. Here we test which of…
Pavel Payne, Jitka Polechová
Are there phases of speciation? Reinforcement, the increase of assortative mating driven by selection against unfit hybrids, is conditional on pre-existing divergence. Yet, for ecological divergence to precede the evolution of assortment, strict symmetries between fitnesses in niches must hold, and/or there must be low…
Emmanuelle Jousselin, Marianne Élias
During the last two decades, ecological speciation has been a major research theme in evolutionary biology. Ecological speciation occurs when reproductive isolation between populations evolves as a result of niche differentiation. Phytophagous insects represent model systems for the study of this evolutionary process.…
Meredith M. Doellman, Hannes Schuler, Gilbert Jean Saint, Glen R. Hood + 10 more
'Glen R. Hood' 'Scott P. Egan' 'Thomas H.Q. Powell' 'Mary M. Glover' 'Daniel J. Bruzzese' 'James J. Smith' 'Wee L. Yee' 'Robert B. Goughnour' 'Juan Rull' 'Martin Aluja' 'Jeffrey L. Feder'] Ascertaining the causes of adaptive radiation is central to understanding how new species arise and come to vary with their…
Jeffrey L Feder, Patrik Nosil
Speciation is not as mysterious as Darwin once described it [1]. Nevertheless, important questions remain. As discussed by Wu [2] and highlighted in a series of papers in National Science Review (NSR), these issues equate with imposing dichotomous perspectives on speciation, when the nature of species and the processes…
Dolph Schluter
Evolutionary hypotheses to explain the greater numbers of species in the tropics than the temperate zone include greater age and area, higher temperature and metabolic rates, and greater ecological opportunity. These ideas make contrasting predictions about the relationship between speciation processes and latitude…
John Lin, James Lin, Natalie Wassall
In modern evolutionary theory, the mechanism of sympatric speciation is still an unsolved mystery. Ecological niche specialization and the subsequent premating reproductive isolation (RI) are the putative initial steps of sympatric speciation, even though the exact mechanism of how the former leads to the latter…
Nicolai M. Nürk, H. Peter Linder, Renske E. Onstein, Matthew J. Larcombe + 14 more
Understanding how and why rates of evolutionary diversification vary is a central issue in evolutionary biology and ecology. The concept of adaptive radiation has attracted much interest, but is metaphorical and verbal in nature, making it difficult to quantitatively compare different evolutionary lineages or…
Ignacio Quintero, Michael J. Landis
Biotic interactions are hypothesized to be one of the main processes shaping trait and biogeographic evolution during lineage diversification. Theoretical and empirical evidence suggests that species with similar ecological requirements either spatially exclude each other, by preventing the colonization of competitors…
Philippe Desjardins-Proulx, Dominique Gravel
Speciation is the "elephant in the room" of community ecology. As the ultimate source of biodiversity, its integration in ecology's theoretical corpus is necessary to understand community assembly. Yet, speciation is often completely ignored or stripped of its spatial dimension. Recent approaches based on network…
Franco Bagnoli, Tommaso Matteuzzi
Using as a narrative theme the example of Darwin's finches, a microscopic agent-based model is introduces to study sympatric speciation as a result of competition for resources in the same ecological niche. Varying competition among individuals and resource distribution, the model exhibits some of the main features of…
Laura Rodrigues Vieira de Alencar, Tiago Bosisio Quental
Although speciation dynamics have been described for several taxonomic groups in distinct geographic regions, most macroevolutionary studies still lack a detailed mechanistic view on how or why speciation rates change. To help partially fill this gap, we suggest that the interaction between the time taken by a species…
Tony Z. Jia, Melina Caudan, Irena Mamajanov, César Menor-Salván
Speciation, an evolutionary process by which new species form, is ultimately responsible for the incredible biodiversity that we observe on Earth every day. Such biodiversity is one of the critical features which contributes to the survivability of biospheres and modern life. While speciation and biodiversity have been…
Sandro Azaele, Samir Suweis, Jacopo Grilli, Igor Volkov + 2 more
'Jayanth R. Banavar' 'Amos Maritan'] The simplest theories often have much merit and many limitations, and in this vein, the value of Neutral Theory (NT) has been the subject of much debate over the past 15 years. NT was proposed at the turn of the century by Stephen Hubbell to explain pervasive patterns observed in…
Andrew J. Rominger, Isaac Overcast, Henrik Krehenwinkel, Rosemary G. Gillespie + 2 more
'Rosemary G. Gillespie' 'John Harte' 'Michael J. Hickerson'] Whether or not biodiversity dynamics tend toward stable equilibria remains an unsolved question in ecology and evolution with important implications for our understanding of diversity and its conservation. Phylo/population genetic models and macroecological…
Aranka Derzsi, Zoltán Néda
Diversity patterns of tree species in a tropical forest community are approached by a simple lattice model and investigated by Monte Carlo simulations using a backtracking method. Our spatially explicit neutral model is based on a simple statistical physics process, namely the diffusion of seeds. The model has three…
Authors not listed
Conservation chemistry is an emerging discipline focused on preventing the loss of biodiversity through molecular-level insight and intervention. As the planet enters a mass extinction event – driven by pollution, habitat loss, invasive species, climate change, overharvesting, and disease – chemical sciences offer…
Authors not listed
Heterotrophic protists can be considered the dark matter of microbial communities in engineered water systems. They are ubiquitous and ecologically significant, yet remain largely overlooked. Although a growing body of research demonstrates their pivotal roles (e.g., predation, symbiosis, and nutrient cycling) in…