A recent Perspectives article by Gavrilets (2003) on the theory of speciation ignored advances in understanding processes of adaptive speciation, in which the splitting of lineages is an adaptation caused by frequency-dependent selection. Adaptive, or sympatric, speciation has been modeled since the 1960s, but the large amount of attention from both empirical and theoretical biologists that ada...

Goals and Scope The aim of the speciation symposia is to facilitate interdisciplinary and intersector discussion about all aspects of elements requiring an understanding of speciation, including" analytical science, geochemistry, biochemistry, clinical chemistry, environmental science, toxicology, essentiality and nutrition, medical uses, environmental and occupational health, and regulatory as...

Hybridization has long been considered a process that prevents divergence between species. In contrast to this historical view, an increasing number of empirical studies claim to show evidence for hybrid speciation without a ploidy change. However, the importance of hybridization as a route to speciation is poorly understood, and many claims have been made with insufficient evidence that hybrid...

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 theory have allowed ecologists to effectively model complex landscapes. In this st...

Islands are bounded areas where high endemism is explained either by allopatric speciation through the fragmentation of the limited amount of space available, or by sympatric speciation and accumulation of daughter species. Most empirical evidence point out the dominant action of allopatric speciation. We evaluate this general view by looking at a case study where sympatric speciation is suspec...