Maintaining microendemic primate species along an environmental gradient - parasites as drivers for species differentiation.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the drivers of species adaptations to changing environments on the one hand and the limits for hybridization on the other hand is among the hottest questions in evolutionary biology. Parasites represent one of the major selective forces driving host evolution and at least those with free-living stages are at the same time dependent on the ecological conditions of their host's habitat. Local immunological adaptations of host species to varying parasite pressure are therefore expected and might represent the genetic basis for ecological speciation and the maintenance of recently diverged species. Madagascar provides one of the rare examples where two partially sympatric primate species (Microcebus griseorufus, M. murinus) and their hybrids, as well as an allopatric species (M.

SUBMITTER: Sommer S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4278824 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature