Genetics and the origin of species: An introduction

Ayala, Francisco J.; Fitch, Walter M.

doi:10.1073/pnas.94.15.7691

Cited by 43 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…In a particular case, such a model must predict the formation of a species or at least distinguish different speciation modes on the basis of quantitatively estimated parameters and/or their empirical estimates. The attempts taken in this direction (Paterson, 1985;DeQuieros, 1998;Templeton, 1981;Ayala and Fitch, 1997) do not meet the above requirements. As a first approach, a scheme and an algorithmic approach have been developed (Kartavtsev, 2000Kartavtsev et al, 2002) to distinguish speciation modes (models) on the basis of key population genetic parameters and their estimates available in the literature.…”

Section: Applicability Of Molecular Evolution Data To Speciation Genementioning

confidence: 77%

Sequence divergence at mitochondrial genes in animals: Applicability of DNA data in genetics of speciation and molecular phylogenetics

Kartavtsev

2011

Marine Genomics

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Section: Applicability Of Molecular Evolution Data To Speciation Genementioning

confidence: 77%

Sequence divergence at mitochondrial genes in animals: Applicability of DNA data in genetics of speciation and molecular phylogenetics

Kartavtsev

2011

Marine Genomics

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“…Although many more such cases need to be examined and evaluated critically, sympatric speciation is theoretically possible (17) and is demonstrated clearly by polyploidy in plants (mentioned in ref. 5). Our study suggests that it will be fruitful to explore the possibility of sympatric speciation in sharply divergent ecologies in subterranean mammals, where the rule is allopatric/peripatric speciation (3).…”

Section: Mitochondrial Genome In Adaptation and Incipient Ecological mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…adaptation | ecological stress | radio-tracking | metabolism | microscale T he origin and nature of species, the mystery of mysteries (1) and "the most important single event in Evolution" (2), have always been problematic in evolutionary studies (2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7). We adhere to the Biological Species Concept (2), recognizing its merits and demerits (2).…”

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confidence: 99%

Possible incipient sympatric ecological speciation in blind mole rats (Spalax)

Hadid

Tzur

Pavlı́ček

et al. 2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Sympatric speciation has been controversial since it was first proposed as a mode of speciation. Subterranean blind mole rats (Spalacidae) are considered to speciate allopatrically or peripatrically. Here, we report a possible incipient sympatric adaptive ecological speciation in Spalax galili (2n = 52). The study microsite (0.04 km 2 ) is sharply subdivided geologically, edaphically, and ecologically into abutting barrier-free ecologies divergent in rock, soil, and vegetation types. The Pleistocene Alma basalt abuts the Cretaceous Senonian Kerem Ben Zimra chalk. Only 28% of 112 plant species were shared between the soils. We examined mitochondrial DNA in the control region and ATP6 in 28 mole rats from basalt and in 14 from chalk habitats. We also sequenced the complete mtDNA (16,423 bp) of four animals, two from each soil type. Remarkably, the frequency of all major haplotype clusters (HC) was highly soil-biased. HCI and HCII are chalk biased. HC-III was abundant in basalt (36%) but absent in chalk; HC-IV was prevalent in basalt (46.5%) but was low (20%) in chalk. Up to 40% of the mtDNA diversity was edaphically dependent, suggesting constrained gene flow. We identified a homologous recombinant mtDNA in the basalt/chalk studied area. Phenotypically significant divergences differentiate the two populations, inhabiting different soils, in adaptive oxygen consumption and in the amount of outsidenest activity. This identification of a possible incipient sympatric adaptive ecological speciation caused by natural selection indirectly refutes the allopatric alternative. Sympatric ecological speciation may be more prevalent in nature because of abundant and sharply abutting divergent ecologies.adaptation | ecological stress | radio-tracking | metabolism | microscale T he origin and nature of species, the mystery of mysteries (1) and "the most important single event in Evolution" (2), have always been problematic in evolutionary studies (2-7). We adhere to the Biological Species Concept (2), recognizing its merits and demerits (2). The recent resurgence in speciation studies highlights many past obscurities (4), including sympatric speciation (7-18). Nevertheless, many basic questions related to adaptation and speciation, including sympatric speciation, still await resolution based primarily on the genomic sequence studies, such as in Drosophila (8), or even in species that presumably originated sympatrically, such as in the fly Rhagolites (9) or cichlid fishes in Africa and Neotropical America (10).The mode of species origin is still a major focus of heated debate. Does speciation occur primarily in allopatry, i.e., requiring complete geographic isolation, or can it occur in parapatry and peripatry, where limited gene exchange operates, or even in sympatry, where free gene exchange occurs, as suggested by Darwin (1)? Darwin envisaged allopatric, parapatric, and sympatric modes of speciation, but neither he nor his followers estimated their proportions in nature, which remain enigmatic and limited (4). Moreover, no spe...

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“…When scientists relate how the discovery of genetics affected evolutionary thinking, they nearly always invoke a caricature of the classical view in which bumbling geneticists fail to find the missing piece, and foolishly imagine that evolution happens by dramatic mutations alone, without selection (e.g., Dawkins, 1987, p. 305;Cronin, 1991, p. 47;Ayala and Fitch, 1997;Eldredge, 2001, p. 67;Segerstra˚le, 2002;Charlesworth and Charlesworth, 2009). Accordingly, when scientists list major evolutionary figures, a large gap appears between nineteenth-and twentieth-century progenitors.…”

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confidence: 99%

Mendelian-Mutationism: The Forgotten Evolutionary Synthesis

Stoltzfus

Cable

2014

J Hist Biol

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Abstract. According to a classical narrative, early geneticists, failing to see how Mendelism provides the missing pieces of Darwin's theory, rejected gradual changes and advocated an implausible yet briefly popular view of evolution-by-mutation; after decades of delay (in which synthesis was prevented by personal conflicts, disciplinary rivalries, and anti-Darwinian animus), Darwinism emerged on a new Mendelian basis. Based on the works of four influential early geneticists -Bateson, de Vries, Morgan and Punnett -, and drawing on recent scholarship, we offer an alternative that turns the classical view on its head. For early geneticists, embracing discrete inheritance and the mutation theory (for the origin of hereditary variation) did not entail rejection of selection, but rejection of Darwin's non-Mendelian views of heredity and variation, his doctrine of natura non facit saltum, and his conception of ''natural selection'' as a creative force that shapes features out of masses of infinitesimal differences. We find no evidence of a delay in synthesizing mutation, rules of discrete inheritance, and selection in a Mendelian-Mutationist Synthesis. Instead, before 1918, early geneticists had conceptualized allelic selection, the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, the evolution of a quantitative trait under selection, the probability of fixation of a new mutation, and Journal of the History of Biology (2014)

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Genetics and the origin of species: An introduction

Cited by 43 publications

References 39 publications

Sequence divergence at mitochondrial genes in animals: Applicability of DNA data in genetics of speciation and molecular phylogenetics

Sequence divergence at mitochondrial genes in animals: Applicability of DNA data in genetics of speciation and molecular phylogenetics

Possible incipient sympatric ecological speciation in blind mole rats (Spalax)

Mendelian-Mutationism: The Forgotten Evolutionary Synthesis

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