Population genetics and objectivity in species diagnosis.

ABSTRACT: Species as evolutionary lineages are expected to show greater evolutionary independence from one another than are populations within species. Two measures of evolutionary independence that stem from the study of isolation-with-migration models, one reflecting the amount of gene exchange and one reflecting the time of separation, were drawn from the literature for a large number of pairs of closely related species and pairs of populations within species. Both measures, for gene flow and time, showed broadly overlapping distributions for pairs of species and for pairs of populations within species. Species on average show more time and less gene flow than populations, but the similarity of the distributions argues against there being a qualitative difference associated with species status, a

SUBMITTER: Hey J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5607743 | biostudies-literature | 2012 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature