Genes and Speciation — 150 Years of Darwin and (nearly) 150 Years of Mendel

摘要

It is not generally recognized that genetic architecture may play a decisive role in speciation. Darwin famously conceived a blending-genetics model of evolution by natural selection. The re-discovery of Mendelian genetics in the dawn of the 20th century thus triggered a backlash which was later recti-fied by neo-Darwinism after the incorporation of Mendelian genetics into the model. The debate on the mode of speciation in the days of Ernst Mayer also has much to do with the genetic architecture driving speciation. The popular allopatric view of speciation is based strongly on the pre-supposition of "genomic integrity". I will discuss 6 sets of genomic data that suggest speciation may be happen-ing all the time in the presence of continual gene flow. Parapatric, rather than allopatric, speciation is likely the more common mode of specation.