Title
The importance of recent ice ages in speciation: A failed paradigm
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-1997
Publication Title
Science
Publisher
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Volume
277
Issue
5332
First page number:
1666
Last page number:
1669
Abstract
Late Pleistocene glaciations have been ascribed a dominant role in sculpting present-day diversity and distributions of North American vertebrates. Molecular comparisons of recently diverged sister species now permit a test of this assertion. The Late Pleistocene Origins model predicts a mitochondrial DNA divergence value of less than 0.5 percent for avian sister species of Late Pleistocene origin. Instead, the average mitochondrial DNA sequence divergence for 35 such songbird species pairs is 5.1 percent, which exceeds the predicted value by a factor of 10. Molecular data suggest a relatively protracted history of speciation events among North American songbirds over the past 5 million years.
Keywords
Birds--Speciation; Molecular genetics; Phylogeography; Songbirds
Controlled Subject
Birds--Speciation; Molecular genetics
Disciplines
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | Molecular Genetics | Ornithology
File Format
ppt
File Size
434 KB
Language
English
Permissions
Use Find in Your Library, contact the author, or use interlibrary loan to garner a copy of the article. Publisher copyright policy allows author to archive post-print (author’s final manuscript). When post-print is available or publisher policy changes, the article will be deposited.
Rights
IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Repository Citation
Klicka, J.,
Zink, R. M.
(1997).
The importance of recent ice ages in speciation: A failed paradigm.
Science, 277(5332),
1666-1669.
Available at: