Meeting Abstract

S3.1  Tuesday, Jan. 4  Speciation in the sea: an introduction to the symposium MIGLIETTA, Maria Pia*; FAUCCI, Anuschka; SANTINI, Francesco; Univ. of Notre Dame; Univ. of Hawaii at Manoa; Univ. of California at Los Angeles mmigliet@nd.edu

One hundred and fifty years after the publication of Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species”, speciation remains one of the most important, and least understood, topics in evolutionary biology. The vast majority of what is currently known about the patterns and processes of species originations derives from studies of terrestrial or freshwater species, which usually inhabit environments that are geographically very heterogeneous. This fact might account for the great importance that students of speciation attribute to allopatric speciation, and to vicariant phenomena in promoting it. Marine organisms, on the other hand, are normally found in environments where geographic barriers are supposed to be much rarer, and in any event, of very different nature from those that their terrestrial and freshwater counterparts may encounter. For these reasons, the mechanisms that drive speciation in terrestrial and freshwater taxa may be different from those that act in marine species, and the patterns of speciation may be significantly different as well. We here describe the current paradigm in speciation in the sea, discuss why we think a multi-disciplinary approach will shed light on the topic, and present the newest findings in some taxonomic groups of our expertise.