What Is Speciation and How Should We Study It?

@article{Wiens2004WhatIS,
  title={What Is Speciation and How Should We Study It?},
  author={John J. Wiens},
  journal={The American Naturalist},
  year={2004},
  volume={163},
  pages={914 - 923}
}
  • J. Wiens
  • Published 13 May 2004
  • Biology
  • The American Naturalist
To understand speciation, we first need to know what species are. Yet debates over species concepts have seemed endless, with little obvious relevance to the study of speciation. Recently, there has been progress in resolving these debates, favoring a lineage‐based, evolutionary species concept. This progress calls for reconsideration of the study of speciation. Traditional speciation research based on the biological species concept has led to great advances in understanding how nonallopatric… 
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177 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
14
Background Citations
107
Methods Citations
3

177 Citations

THE BIOLOGY OF SPECIATION
TLDR
It is argued that natural selection is a ubiquitous part of speciation, and given the many ways in which stochastic and deterministic factors may interact during divergence, it is questioned whether the ecological speciation concept is useful.
The Geography of Speciation: Case Studies from Birds
  • R. M. Zink
  • Environmental Science, Biology
    Evolution: Education and Outreach
  • 2012
TLDR
There is no mystery about the geography of speciation: at least in birds, allopatry predominates; the sentiment that speciation is mysterious comes from the biological species concept, which requires populations to be reproductively isolated before recognizing them as species.
Speciation by selection: A framework for understanding ecology's role in speciation
TLDR
A unified framework of speciation is presented, pro- viding mechanistic descriptions of fundamentally distinct routes to speciation, and how these may interact during lineage splitting and how all three mechanisms can occur side-by-side during speciation.
DOES NICHE CONSERVATISM PROMOTE SPECIATION? A CASE STUDY IN NORTH AMERICAN SALAMANDERS
  • K. Kozak, J. Wiens
  • Environmental Science, Geography
    Evolution; international journal of organic evolution
  • 2006
TLDR
The results demonstrate that even the relatively subtle climatic differences between montane and lowland habitats in eastern North America may play a key role in the origin of new species.
Homage to Hutchinson, and the role of ecology in lineage divergence and speciation
TLDR
The role of niche divergence in shaping the ranges of sister taxa and in the speciation process is explored to explore the role for ecology in lineage divergence and speciation.
Biodiversity and the Species Concept-Lineages are not Enough.
TLDR
Viewing species as historically connected populations with unique role brings together the temporal and phenotypic natures of species, providing a clear way to view species both in a time-limited and time-extended way.
Reproductive isolation and the causes of speciation rate variation in nature
TLDR
If reproductive isolation is not the rate-limiting control on speciation rates, then factors other than reproductive isolation must be involved in speciation and the definition of speciation should be expanded to incorporate these additional processes.
Niche Conservatism: Integrating Evolution, Ecology, and Conservation Biology
TLDR
This work describes how niche conservatism in climatic tolerances may limit geographic range expansion and how this one type of niche conservatism may be important in allopatric speciation and the spread of invasive, human-introduced species.
Lizards as model organisms for linking phylogeographic and speciation studies
TLDR
An expanded approach to compare patterns of variation in phylogeographic data sets that, when coupled with morphological and environmental data, can be used to to discriminate among these alternative speciation patterns is proposed.
Ecogeographic Isolation and Speciation in the Genus Mimulus
TLDR
Estimating the strength of prezygotic barriers, a strong barrier that acts early in the life cycle of organisms, has the potential to contribute greatly to the total isolation experienced between diverging species.
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References

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