Niche theory and speciation

In 2011, I attend a meeting on "Niche Theory and Speciation" in Hungary. The first volume of the special issue resulting from that meeting has just been published in Evolutionary Ecology Research. This first volume includes eight empirical papers plus an introduction, from which I now quote:

"This special collection, which is split between the May and July issues, originated from the workshop ‘Niche Theory and Speciation’ (http://nichews.elte.hu). The meeting took place at Keszthely (Lake Balaton) in Hungary in August 2011, and was organized by Géza Meszéna, Åke Brännström, Ulf Dieckmann, Gabriella Magyar, Liz Pásztor, and András Szilágyi. Funding was provided by the European Science Foundation in the framework of the Research Networking Programme ‘Frontiers of Speciation Research’, and also by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Laxenburg, Austria)."

"As editors, our goal was to attract the best possible set of papers. We therefore expressly left it open to authors to decide the papers they wished to contribute. Some of the papers are written summaries of work presented at the 2011 meeting, whereas others grew out of discussions during and after the event. We also solicited some additional papers from investigators who had been invited to the original meeting but who were unable to attend. We also strove for a lively mix of empirical and theoretical papers given that progress in the field will undoubtedly require effort from both sides. In the end, all papers emphasized the connection between ecology and evolution, but these links emerged naturally rather than being forced by the editors."


And here are the papers with links to the online versions:


Géza Meszéna & Andrew P. Hendry. 2012. Introduction to Niche Theory and Speciation. 14:361-363.

Luis Fernando De León, Gregor Rolshausen, Eldredge Bermingham, Jeffrey Podos & Andrew P. Hendry. 2012. Individual specialization and the seeds of adaptive radiation in Darwin's finches. 14:365-380.

Jay J. Falk, Christine E. Parent, Deepa Agashe & Daniel I. Bolnick. 2012. Drift and selection entwined: asymmetric reproductive isolation in an experimental niche shift. 14:403-423.


Andrew D. Foote. 2012. Investigating ecological speciation in non-model organisms: a case study of killer whale ecotypes. 14:447:465.


Travis Ingram, Alan G. Hudson, Pascal Vonlanthen & Ole Seehausen. 2012. Does water depth or diet divergence predict progress toward ecological speciation in whitefish radiations? 14:487-502.


I. S. Magalhaes, B. Lundsgaard-Hansen, S. Mwaiko & Ole Seehausen. 2012. Evolutionary divergence in replicate pairs of ecotypes of Lake Victoria cichlid fish. 14:381-401.

Patrik Nosil & Paul Hohenlohe. 2012. Dimensionality of sexual isolation during reinforcement and ecological speciation in Timema cristinae stick insects. 14:467-485. 

Yuval Sapir & Rupert Mazzucco. 2012. Post-zygotic reproductive isolation among populations of Iris atropurpurea: the effect of spatial distance among crosses and the role of inbreeding and outbreeding depression in determining niche width. 14:425-445.


Jorge Soberón & David Martínez-Gordillo. 2012. Occupation of environmental and morphological space: climatic niche and skull shape in Neotoma woodrats. 14:503-517.