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Recombination-suppression: how many mechanisms for chromosomal speciation?

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Abstract

Over the past decade several theoretical and empirical studies have revived interest in the role of chromosomes in speciation. The resulting models do not suffer from the problems experienced by previously proposed mechanisms of chromosomal speciation, because they invoke suppression of recombination rather than a reduction in the fitness of heterokaryotypes as their core process. However, they are not free from difficulties. The evidence for recombination-suppression models is discussed here. The general conclusion is that a consensus opinion on which models best describe the real-world situation is currently unlikely because of an inability of the available empirical evidence to fully distinguish between them, which may be due in part to a lack of exclusivity. I argue that future work should take this lack of exclusivity into account. Resolving the biogeography of speciation is also suggested in order to tell the various models apart. Further study is needed which focuses on confirming the operation of individual elements of the various models, rather than attempting to validate any single mechanism as a whole.

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Acknowledgments

Thank you to Professor Roger Butlin for providing supervision during the writing of an earlier version of this manuscript as an undergraduate dissertation at the University of Sheffield, as well as for subsequent helpful discussions and advice, and to two anonymous reviewers for their comments.

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  1. Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield, S10 2TN, UK

    Benjamin Charles Jackson

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Correspondence to Benjamin Charles Jackson.

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Jackson, B.C. Recombination-suppression: how many mechanisms for chromosomal speciation?. Genetica 139, 393–402 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10709-011-9558-0

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