Chromatin Evolution and Molecular Drive in Speciation

Speciation is unlikely to drive divergence rates.

estimation of speciation and extinction rates, ancestral character states, and rates of anagenetic and cladogenetic evolution on a molecular phylogeny. Evolution 62, 2718–2726 4 Webster, A.J. et al. (2003) Molecular phylogenies link rates of evolution and speciation. Science 301, 478 5 Pagel, M. et al. (2006) Large punctuational contribution of speciation to evolutionary divergence at the molec...

The role of meiotic drive in hybrid male sterility.

Meiotic drive causes the distortion of allelic segregation away from Mendelian expected ratios, often also reducing fecundity and favouring the evolution of drive suppressors. If different species evolve distinct drive-suppressor systems, then hybrid progeny may be sterile as a result of negative interactions of these systems' components. Although the hypothesis that meiotic drive may contribut...

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

Unifying Theories of Molecular, Community and Network Evolution

1 The origin of diversification and coexistence of genes and species have been 2 traditionally studied in isolated biological levels. Ecological and evolutionary 3 views have focused on the mechanisms that enable or constrain species coexis4 tence, genetic variation and the genetics of speciation, but a unified theory linking 5 those approaches is still missing. Here we introduce evolutionary g...

Speciation and ecology revisited: phylogenetic niche conservatism and the origin of species.

Evolutionary biologists have often suggested that ecology is important in speciation, in that natural selection may drive adaptive divergence between lineages that inhabit different environments. I suggest that it is the tendency of lineages to maintain their ancestral ecological niche (phylogenetic niche conservatism) and their failure to adapt to new environments which frequently isolates inc...