SANTINI, F.: Speciation in the Sea

During this presentation I will review the recent literature on patterns of speciation that has been used by some authors to support the claim that vicariance is the dominant mode of speciation in vertebrates. This conclusion has been reached by applying flawed models of speciation to the study of a very limited number of terrestrial and freshwater clades. I will highlight the many theoretical problems of these models, and I will later illustrate the results obtained from the study of a much larger dataset of marine clades. This work on marine organisms seems to indicate that, perhaps due to important features of the reproductive biology of many marine organisms, sympatric and peripheral isolation modes of speciations might be predominant in the sea.