Over the last two decades, the study of speciation has expanded from a
modest backwater of evolutionary biology into a large and vigorous
discipline. Thus, the literature on speciation, as well as the number of
researchers and students working in this area, has grown explosively.
Despite these developments, there has been no book-length treatment of
speciation in many years. As a result, both the seasoned scholar and the
newcomer to evolutionary biology had no ready guide to the recent
literature on speciation--a body of work that is enormous, scattered,
and increasingly technical. Although several excellent symposium volumes
have recently appeared, these collections do not provide a unified,
critical, and up-to-date overview of the field. Speciation is designed
to fill this gap.
Aimed at professional biologists, graduate students, and advanced
undergraduates, Speciation covers both plants and animals (the first
book on this subject to do so), and deals with all relevant areas of
research, including biogeography, field work, systematics, theory, and
genetic and molecular studies. It gives special emphasis to topics that
are either controversial or the subject of active research, including
sympatric speciation, reinforcement, the role of hybridization in
speciation, the search for genes causing reproductive isolation, and
mounting evidence for the role of natural and sexual selection in the
origin of species. The authors do not hesitate to take stands on these
and other controversial issues. This critical and scholarly book will be
invaluable to researchers in evolutionary biology and is also ideal for
a graduate-level course on speciation.
