What is a species? Take the Latitudinal Biodiversity Gradient (LBG). Do the Tropics produce more species? LBG is gone in deep time. Environmental gradients, time and space might be external explanations for diversifying lineages. But lineages strongly differ in diversification rates. Some contain thousands of species while others just a few. What if DNA, development, gene expression, behavior and sexual selection combine with external factors to produce a complex set of interacting layers challenging speciation events? Experimental evolution brings light to the speciation process. Many studies have shown ecological diversification from bacterial communities to eukaryotic taxa. Theoretical speciation models, from population genetics to statistical physics have also shown predictions fitting diversifying lineages. Still, theory and experiments connecting diversification to coexistence remains open. How would the next unifying diversification and biodiversity theory look like?
Note the unusual start time, 12:00 noon.
The seminar is presential with parallel zoom stream: https://zoom.us/j/98286706234?pwd=bm1JUFVYcTJkaVl1VU55L0FiWDRIUT09
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