The Dobzhansky–Muller model posits that incompatibilities between alleles at different loci 5 cause speciation. However, it is known that if the alleles involved in a Dobzhansky–Muller 6 incompatibility (DMI) between two loci are neutral, the resulting reproductive isolation cannot 7 be maintained in the presence of either mutation or gene flow. Here we propose that speciation 8 can emerge thro...

Although theory indicates that natural selection can facilitate speciation as a by-product, demonstrating ongoing speciation via this by-product mechanism in nature has proven difficult. We examined morphological, molecular, and behavioral data to investigate ecology's role in incipient speciation for a post-Pleistocene radiation of Bahamas mosquitofish (Gambusia hubbsi) inhabiting blue holes. ...

One of the most important problems in evolutionary biology is to understand how new species are generated in nature. In the past, it was difficult to study this problem because our lifetime is too short to observe the entire process of speciation. In recent years, however, molecular and genomic techniques have been developed for identifying and studying the genes involved in speciation. Using t...

Area is generally assumed to affect speciation rates, but work on the spatial context of speciation has focused mostly on patterns of range overlap between emerging species rather than on questions of geographical scale. A variety of geographical theories of speciation predict that the probability of speciation occurring within a given region should (1) increase with the size of the region and ...