Genetic footprints of speciation

Section of Evolutionary Ecology, Department of Biology II, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany

Pleuni Pennings

Pleuni Pennings

One of the main aims of evolutionary biology is to explain the species diversity we see today and infer from the fossil record. Apparently, processes of speciation, by which a single species is split into two genetically distinct ones, take place often enough to give rise to high species diversity, but not so often that we could not distinguish species anymore. Nowadays, biologists think that speciation can happen through several different mechanisms. Finding out which of these speciation modes is more prevalent in nature remains a major challenge. Because much genetic data is currently becoming available for many species and populations, it seems promising to use such data to learn about a species' speciation history. In my talk I will briefly introduce two ways in which speciation can happen and present some ideas on how genetic data might be used to distinguish between speciation modes.



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Last edited: 03 September 2018

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