Quantifying adaptive divergence of the snowfinches in a common landscape

Abstract

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Sexual imprinting leads to speciation in locally adapted populations

“…Several locally adaptive genes, with F ST values in the range 0.44–0.77, were identified and their functions established. Islands of high divergence, within a genome‐wide background of low divergence, have also been reported in species of Darwin's finches differing in beak size and shape (Han et al, 2017), in four species of Lake Malawi cichlids varying in their adaptations to deepwater environments (Hahn et al, 2017), in two East Asian plovers (Wang et al, 2019) two North American parulid warblers (Toews et al, 2016), three species of sympatric snowfinch (She et al, 2021), within capuchin monkeys comparing those from tropical dry forests with those from lowland rain forest (Orkin et al, 2021), and within treefrogs Boana platanera in habitats varying from warm lowland valleys to cooler moist upland forest in the Andes (Medina et al, 2021). These studies demonstrate the potential for genome sequencing to investigate cases of incipient or complete parapatric speciation.…”

New progress in exploring the mechanisms underlying extraordinarily high biodiversity in global hotspots and their implications for conservation

“…On the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau, She et al (2022) used ecologic, phenotypic and genomic data for three sympatric species of snowfinches to investigate the different adaptations of these species, which is important for the understanding ecologically moderated biodiversity. They found that body and beak sizes differ significantly among the three snowfinches and that the extent of phenotypic divergence between snowfinch pairs is more strongly correlated with the magnitude of divergence in developmental genes compared to in the whole genome.…”