Ecological divergence exhibits consistently positive associations with reproductive isolation across disparate taxa.

ABSTRACT: To what degree is the divergent adaptation responsible for life's phenotypic variety also responsible for generating the millions of species that manifest this variation? Theory predicts that ecological divergence among populations should promote reproductive isolation, and recent empirical studies provide support for this hypothesis in a limited number of specific taxa. However, the essential question of whether ecology plays a truly general role in speciation has yet to be systematically evaluated. Here we address this integral issue using an approach that adds an ecological dimension to comparative studies investigating the relationship between reproductive isolation and divergence time. Specifically, we quantify ecological divergence for >500 species pairs from eight plant, invertebrat

SUBMITTER: Funk DJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1413886 | biostudies-literature | 2006 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature