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Tag Archives: ecological speciation
Sexual selection and population fitness
Sexual selection or non-random mate choice acts to ‘filter’ out less competitive/desirable phenotypes from a population. In the presence of small effect mutation loads, i.e. small fitness differences between a mutation-free population, and one with persistent deleterious mutations, sexual selection … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, evolution, mutation, population genetics
Tagged ecological speciation, genomics, natural selection, population genetics
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Gene flow and Population Fitness
Fitness effects of gene flow (both advantageous and deleterious) have garnered plenty of recent press and scientific exploration. At the population level, the concepts and consequences are notoriously familiar. In the context of immigration, they reduce to existing genetic variation, … Continue reading
How many genes does it take to make a new species?
Three-spined sticklebacks are speciation machines. When retreating glaciers exposed lakes and rivers around the coasts of northern North America and Eurasia, these armor-plated little fish colonized the new freshwater habitats from the ocean, and adapted to the threats and resources … Continue reading
Posted in genomics, population genetics, quantitative genetics, speciation
Tagged ecological speciation, stickleback
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Speciation with gene flow and the virtual beanbag: Genome-level effects increase divergence during ecological speciation, but linkage is not required
This post is a guest contribution by Dylan Goldade, Kathryn Theiss, and Chris Smith, from the Biology Department at Willamette University. See below for the coauthors’ afflilations and research interests. In a famous address given on the hundredth anniversary of the … Continue reading