Meeting Abstract

S3.4  Tuesday, Jan. 4  Sympatric speciation in the sea BERNARDI, G.; Univ. of California, Santa Cruz bernardi@biology.ucsc.edu

The presence of breeding barriers between populations have traditionally been equated to allopatric modes of speciation. Recently, however, theoretical and empirical evidence has shown that sympatric speciation is not only possible but likely to be more frequent than previously thought. In the case of marine systems, where physical barriers are not obvious, speciation mechanisms are difficult to study. Yet, there too, allopatric speciation is presumed to be the norm. Here we will present a framework to positively identify sympatric modes of speciation and an empirical example where sympatric speciation was presumed to have occurred in a group of marine fishes.