Ingrid Olivares

The likelihood of sympatric speciation and morphological divergence in plants | PNAS Sympatric speciation is considered rare, but oceanic Howea palms, crater lake cichlids, and parasitic indigobirds provide compelling evidence that ...

In our @pnas.org study in collaboration with Søren Faurby, Rodrigo Cámara and Alex Pigot, we test these questions on palms 🌴 and conifers 🌲and it is open access here:
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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How frequent is this phenomenon in plants more broadly? And does speciation always involve visible morphological differences?

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One exceptional case in plants, involving Howea palms 🌴 on a remote island, sparked intense debate but has since been confirmed as a true instance of sympatric #speciation. That discovery also raised new questions such as:

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Indigobird on a tree branch

While some animal species—like crater lake cichlids or parasitic Indigobirds—have shown that it is possible for species to split without being separated by physical barriers (a process known as sympatric speciation), such empirical examples are rare. (picture from earthlife.net)

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How do species diverge? Could the relative immobility of plants increase their likelihood of speciating in the same place?🧵

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