Factors influencing progress toward ecological speciation: a special issue.

I recently helped Marianne Elias, Rui Faria, and Zach Gompert to edit a special issue on the topic of Ecological Speciation for the International Journal of Ecology. The special issue is now online and is entirely free to download. The issue includes19 papers from many of the leading authors in ecological speciation.

All of the papers in the special issue can viewed here:
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijeco/si/213683/

And the entire issue can be downloaded as a single PDF here: http://downloads.hindawi.com/journals/specialissues/213683.pdf

Happy reading.

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Here is a paragraph from our introduction to the special issue that summarizes it's contents. I follow that with a list of the paper titles and authors.

"This special issue on ecological speciation puts snapshots of progress toward speciation sharply in focus and then investigates this topic from several angles. First, several papers provide conceptual or theoretical models for how to consider progress toward ecological speciation (Funk; Heard; Lenormand; Liancourt et al.; Agrawal et al.). Second, several papers highlight the noninevitability of ecological speciation through investigations where ecological speciation seems to be strongly constrained (Räsänen et al.; Bolnick) or at least lacking definitive evidence (Ostevik et al.; Scholl et al.). Some of these papers also uncover specific factors that seem particularly important to ecological speciation, such as the combination of geographic isolation and habitat differences (Surget-Groba et al.), the strength of disruptive selection and assortative mating (Bolnick), and host-plant adaptation (Scholl et al.). Third, several particularly important factors emerge as a common theme across multiple papers, particularly parasites/pollinators (Xu et al.; Karvonen and Seehausen), habitat choice (Webster et al.; Feder et al.; Carling and Thomassen; Egan et al.), and phenotypic plasticity (Fitzpatrick; Vallin and Qvarnström)."

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Ecological Speciation

Guest Editors: Marianne Elias, Rui Faria, Zachariah Gompert, and Andrew Hendry

Factors Influencing Progress toward Ecological Speciation, Marianne Elias, Rui Faria, Zachariah Gompert, and Andrew Hendry
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 235010, 7 pages

The Role of Parasitism in Adaptive Radiations—When Might Parasites Promote and When Might They Constrain Ecological Speciation?, Anssi Karvonen and Ole Seehausen
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 280169, 20 pages

Parallel Ecological Speciation in Plants?, Katherine L. Ostevik, Brook T. Moyers, Gregory L. Owens, and Loren H. Rieseberg
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 939862, 17 pages

From Local Adaptation to Speciation: Specialization and Reinforcement, Thomas Lenormand
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 508458, 11 pages

Testing the Role of Habitat Isolation among Ecologically Divergent Gall Wasp Populations, Scott P. Egan, Glen R. Hood, and James R. Ott
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 809897, 8 pages

Underappreciated Consequences of Phenotypic Plasticity for Ecological Speciation, Benjamin M. Fitzpatrick
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 256017, 12 pages

Ecological Adaptation and Speciation: The Evolutionary Significance of Habitat Avoidance as a Postzygotic Reproductive Barrier to Gene Flow, Jeffrey L. Feder, Scott P. Egan, and Andrew A. Forbes
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 456374, 15 pages

Larval Performance in the Context of Ecological Diversification and Speciation in Lycaeides Butterflies, Cynthia F. Scholl, Chris C. Nice, James A. Fordyce, Zachariah Gompert, and Matthew L. Forister
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 242154, 13 pages

Divergent Selection and Then What Not: The Conundrum of Missing Reproductive Isolation in Misty Lake and Stream Stickleback, Katja Räsänen, Matthieu Delcourt, Lauren J. Chapman, and Andrew P. Hendry
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 902438, 14 pages

How Facilitation May Interfere with Ecological Speciation, P. Liancourt, P. Choler, N. Gross, X. Thibert-Plante, and K. Tielbörger
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 725487, 11 pages

Use of Host-Plant Trait Space by Phytophagous Insects during Host-Associated Differentiation: The Gape-and-Pinch Model, Stephen B. Heard
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 192345, 15 pages

Habitat Choice and Speciation, Sophie E. Webster, Juan Galindo, John W. Grahame, and Roger K. Butlin
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 154686, 12 pages

The Role of Environmental Heterogeneity in Maintaining Reproductive Isolation between Hybridizing Passerina (Aves: Cardinalidae) Buntings, Matthew D. Carling and Henri A. Thomassen
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 295463, 11 pages

Pollinator-Driven Speciation in Sexually Deceptive Orchids, Shuqing Xu, Philipp M. Schlüter, and Florian P. Schiestl
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 285081, 9 pages

Synergy between Allopatry and Ecology in Population Differentiation and Speciation, Yann Surget-Groba, Helena Johansson, and Roger S. Thorpe
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 273413, 10 pages

Of “Host Forms” and Host Races: Terminological Issues in Ecological Speciation, Daniel J. Funk
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 506957, 8 pages

Learning the Hard Way: Imprinting Can Enhance Enforced Shifts in Habitat Choice, Niclas Vallin and Anna Qvarnström
Volume 2011 (2011), Article ID 287532, 7 pages

Sympatric Speciation in Threespine Stickleback: Why Not?, Daniel I. Bolnick
Volume 2011 (2011), Article ID 942847, 15 pages

Ecological Divergence and the Origins of Intrinsic Postmating Isolation with Gene Flow, Aneil F. Agrawal, Jeffrey L. Feder, and Patrik Nosil
Volume 2011 (2011), Article ID 435357, 15 pages