For anurans, increasing complexity of the inner ear has been correlated with speciation rates. The evolution of a complex amphibian papilla (AP) is thought to have facilitated speciation by extending the range of frequencies over which mating calls may diverge. Although this example has been proposed to represent a key innovation, the mechanism by which the AP is thought to promote speciation m...

A common pattern in time-calibrated molecular phylogenies is a signal of rapid diversification early in the history of a radiation. Because the net rate of diversification is the difference between speciation and extinction rates, such "explosive-early" diversification could result either from temporally declining speciation rates or from increasing extinction rates through time. Distinguishing...

Diversity of the primary groups of contemporary Indo-West Pacific coral reef organisms, including mantis shrimps (stomatopod crustaceans), peaks in the Indo-Australian Archipelago (IAA), reaches a lower peak in East Africa and Madagascar [Indian Ocean continental (IOC)], and declines in the central Indian Ocean (IO) and Central Pacific (CP). Percent endemism in stomatopods (highest in the IAA, ...

If we are to plan conservation strategies that minimize the loss of evolutionary history through human-caused extinctions, we must understand how this loss is related to phylogenetic patterns in current extinction risks and past speciation rates. Nee & May (1997, Science 278, 692-694) showed that for a randomly evolving clade (i) a single round of random extinction removed relatively little evo...

The geography of speciation is one of the most contentious topics at the frontier between ecology and evolution. Here, building on previous hypotheses, I propose that ecological constraints on species co-existence mediate the likelihood of speciation, via a trade-off between competitive and dispersal abilities. Habitat stability, as found in the tropics, selects for the evolution of stronger co...

Variation in diversification rates is often studied by investigating traits related to species' ecology and life history. Often, however, it is unknown whether these traits evolve gradually or in punctuated bursts during speciation. Using phylogenetic data and species' present-day trait information, we present a novel approach to assessing the mode of character change while accounting for trait...

Previous studies have shown that assortative mating acts as a driver of speciation by countering hybridization between two populations of the same species (pre-zygotic isolation) or through mate choice among the hybrids (hybrid speciation). In both speciation types, assortative mating promotes speciation over a transient hybridization stage. We studied mate choice in a hybrid vertebrate complex...

The neutral theory of biodiversity (NTB) provides an individual-based modeling framework to study eco-evolutionary dynamics. Previous NTB models usually assumed the same per capita rate of speciation across lineages. However, population dynamics may induce macroevolutionary feedbacks that can result in variable per capita speciation rates across lineages. In this paper, with analytical and simu...

One of the most celebrated examples of sympatric speciation in nature are monophyletic radiations of cichlid fishes endemic to Cameroon crater lakes. However, phylogenetic inference of monophyly may not detect complex colonization histories involving some allopatric isolation, such as double invasions obscured by genome-wide gene flow. Population genomic approaches are better suited to test hyp...

We investigate the problem of speciation and coexistence in simple ecosystems when the competition among individuals is included in the Eigen model for quasispecies. By suggesting an analogy between the competition among strains and the diffusion of a chemical inhibitor in a reaction-diffusion system, the speciation phenomenon is considered the analogous of chemical pattern formation in genetic...