Dear colleagues, A special issue of Evolutionary Ecology Research edited by Andrew Hendry and based on work presented at the Niche Theory and Speciation workshop held in Hungary almost one year ago is now available to access online ahead of final publication: http://www.evolutionary-ecology.com/forthcoming.html
The special issue includes the following review paper in addition to other contributions from the likes of Dan Bolnick, Ole Seehausen, and Patrick Nosil, and should be of interest to those working on evolution and speciation. Please contact me if you have any difficulty accessing the article. Foote, A.D. (2012) Investigating ecological speciation in non-model organisms: a case study on killer whale ecotypes. Evolutionary Ecology Research (http://www.evolutionary-ecology.com/issues/forthcoming/ar2727.pdf) ABSTRACT BACKGROUND: Studies of ecological speciation have been dominated by a few model biological systems. There are comparably few studies on non-model organisms that have been able to robustly infer ecological speciation as the underlying mechanism of evolutionary divergence. QUESTION: What are the pitfalls in studying ecological speciation in non-model organisms that lead to this bias? and what alternative approaches might redress the balance? ORGANISM: Genetically differentiated types of the killer whale (*Orcinus orca*) exhibiting differences in prey preference, habitat use, morphology and behavior. METHODS: I review the literature on killer whale evolutionary ecology to highlight the difficulty of identifying whether there are causal links between variation in phenotype, ecology and reproductive isolation in this non-model organism. RESULTS: I suggest that there is currently insufficient evidence to suggest that adaptive phenotype traits linked to ecological variation underlie reproductive isolation between sympatric killer whale types. This does not mean that ecological speciation has not occurred, but rather that it is hard to conclusively prove. The constraints on studying non-model organisms means that this is the likely outcome in studies of species that experimental approaches and comparative studies among multiple taxon pairs cannot easily be applied to. New genomic approaches that first identify genes under selection and then link alleles to phenotypic differences and reproductive isolation may increase the success of robustly inferring ecological speciation in non-model organisms. Best regards, Andy -- *Dr Andrew Foote* *Centre for GeoGenetics* The Natural History Museum of Denmark Øster Voldgade 5 - 7 1350 Copenhagen K
_______________________________________________ MARMAM mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/marmam
