Evidence for abrupt speciation in a classic case of gradual evolution.

Is Speciation Accompanied by Rapid Evolution? Insights from Comparing Reproductive and Nonreproductive Transcriptomes in Drosophila

The tempo and mode of evolutionary change during speciation have remained contentious until recently. While much of the evidence claiming speciation is an abrupt and rapid process comes from fossil data, recent molecular phylogenetics show that the background of gradual evolution is often broken by accelerated rates of molecular evolution during speciation. However, what kinds of genes affect o...

A physical model for competition between biological speciation and extinction

Time evolution of number of species (genera, families, and others), population of them, and size distribution of present ones and life times are studied in terms of a new model, where population of each genetic taxon increases by a (random) rate and decreases by (random) division (fragmentation). Each of log-normal, exponential and power law distributions in various empirical data about mention...

Editorial: Could Speciation Across Evolution be Governed by Genetic Switch Codes at Short Tandem Repeats?

Coevolution of exploiter specialization and victim mimicry can be cyclic and saltational

Darwin's Principle of Divergence explains sympatric speciation as gradual and directional. Contradicting evidence suggests that species' traits evolve saltationally. Here, we model coevolution in exploiter-victim systems. Victims (resource population) have heritable, mutable cue phenotypes with different levels of defense. Exploiters have heritable, mutable perceptual phenotypes. Our simulation...

Interim Report IR - 09 - 063 Speciation and the evolution of dispersal along environmental gradients

9 We analyze the joint evolution of an ecological character and of dispersal distance in asex10 ual and sexual populations inhabiting an environmental gradient. Several interesting 11 phenomena resulting from the evolutionary interplay of these characters are revealed. First, 12 asexual and sexual populations exhibit two analogous evolutionary regimes, in which either 13 speciation in the ecolo...