Reevaluating claims of ecological speciation in Halichoeres bivittatus.

ABSTRACT: Allopatry has traditionally been viewed as the primary driver of speciation in marine taxa, but the geography of the marine environment and the larval dispersal capabilities of many marine organisms render this view somewhat questionable. In marine fishes, one of the earliest and most highly cited empirical examples of ecological speciation with gene flow is the slippery dick wrasse, Halichoeres bivittatus. Evidence for this cryptic or incipient speciation event was primarily in the form of a deep divergence in a single mitochondrial locus between the northern and southern Gulf of Mexico, combined with a finding that these two haplotypes were associated with different habitat types ("tropical" vs. "subtropical") in the Florida Keys and Bermuda, where they overlap. Here, we examine h

SUBMITTER: Warren DL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8366890 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature