Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Search research articles

Related Experiment Videos

Waiting time to parapatric speciation.

¹Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville 37996, USA. sergey@tiem.utk.edu

Proceedings. Biological Sciences

|February 24, 2001

Summary

Speciation can occur through mutation and genetic drift alone, especially with environmental changes. Local adaptation significantly speeds up this process, with the transition phase being much shorter than the total time to speciation.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Evolution and speciation on holey adaptive landscapes.

Trends in ecology & evolution·2011

Same author

Case studies and mathematical models of ecological speciation. 3: Ecotype formation in a Swedish snail.

Molecular ecology·2009

Same author

Pattern, process and geographic modes of speciation.

Journal of evolutionary biology·2009

Same author

What, if anything, is sympatric speciation?

Journal of evolutionary biology·2008

Same author

On the evolution of premating isolation after a founder event.

The American naturalist·2008

Same author

The dynamics of sexual conflict over mating rate with endosymbiont infection that affects reproductive phenotypes.

Journal of evolutionary biology·2007

Area of Science:

Evolutionary Biology
Population Genetics
Speciation Research

Background:

Parapatric speciation occurs when populations diverge while maintaining partial gene flow.
Understanding the genetic basis and timescale of speciation is crucial for evolutionary studies.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the average waiting time for parapatric speciation under weak migration and mutation.
To model the dynamics of reproductive isolation using multilocus generalizations of the Dobzhansky model.

Main Methods:

Utilized a weak migration and weak mutation approximation.
Modeled speciation dynamics as a biased random walk of genetic distance between residents and immigrants.
Incorporated classical Dobzhansky model and its multilocus extensions for reproductive isolation.

Main Results:

Mutation and genetic drift can drive speciation within 10-1000 generations (scaled by mutation rate) if few genetic changes suffice for reproductive isolation.
Weak selection for local adaptation substantially reduces the time to speciation.
The actual duration of intermediate forms during parapatric speciation is orders of magnitude shorter than the waiting time.

Conclusions:

Parapatric speciation can be rapid, particularly under environmental changes.
The duration of the transition phase is approximately inversely proportional to the mutation rate.
Environmental shifts are likely triggers for parapatric speciation events.

Related Experiment Videos