Speciation [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

~ (Author), H. Allen Orr (Author) "One of the most striking developments in evolutionary biology during the last 20 years has been a resurgence of interest in the origin of species..." (more)
Key Phrases: speciation intervals, postzygotic isolation, pollinator isolation, North America, Lake Victoria, Hawaiian Drosophila (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Over the last two decades, the study of speciation has expanded from a modest backwater of evolutionary biology into a large and vigorous discipline. Speciation is designed to provide a unified, critical and up to date overview of the field. Aimed at professional biologists, graduate students and advanced undergraduates, it covers both plants and animals and deals with all relevant areas of research, including biogeography, field work, systematics, theory, and genetic and molecular studies. It gives special emphasis to topics that are either controversial or the subject of active research, including sympatric speciation, reinforcement, the role of hybridization in speciation, the search for genes causing reproductive isolation and mounting evidence for the role of natural and sexual selection in the origin of species.

About the Author

JERRY A. COYNE is Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, USA. H. ALLEN ORR is Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Rochester, USA.

Product Details

• Paperback: 545 pages
• Publisher: Sinauer Associates, Inc.; 1 edition (May 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0878930892
• ISBN-13: 978-0878930890
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #288,357 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Coyne and Orr: Lords of the flies?, November 17, 2007

By	Plant Doc (Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews

I bought this book for a cross-disciplinary seminar on Speciation. I was the lone plant biologist in the group. I was not deterred. After all, Darwin was a botanist and some of the most intriguing work in evolution has focused on plants. Since G. Ledyard Stebbins wrote Variation and Evolution in Plants in 1949, there is concensus (I think) that plants--perhaps together with bdelloid rotifers--are what make the "species problem" such a problem. With visions of Taraxacum and Rubus and other such deliciously vexing groups running through my mind, I dove in with gusto. What did I find? Flies, flies, flies and more flies! Dobzhansky would be proud. Such an incredible diversity of plant topics that might have been brought to the table were simply overlooked, ignored, or--as I began to suspect further in--simply not understood. I found myself writing the same note over and over in the margin, "yes, but this isn't true of plants". The authors do admit early on that the book is Drosophila-rich, but this is no excuse for not expanding to include other relevant biological systems here.

Coyne and Orr are married to the biological species concept and flat out don't believe in sympatric speciation. If one was actually to apply their "modified" version of the BSC to plants, the taxonomy of plants as we understand it today would collapse. And if you hold any hope that sympatric speciation might be possible, Coyne and Orr will beat those fantasies out of you. In fact, their distaste for the topic borders on fanaticism. By the latter chapters, I found myself rolling my eyes each time sympatry was discussed. Enough!

That said, Speciation is still a solid text on the topic and an excellent introduction for advanced undergrads or grad students. Coyne and Orr do an exceptional job discussing the merits and drawbacks of various research approaches, and do provide suggestions for moving forward. I actually highly recommend this text because I think it introduces concepts well and thoroughly, with the caveat that it is bound to frustrate those working with plants, or asexual taxa of any sort.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars nice review but rather pedantic, January 16, 2007

By	Cody Hinchliff (Pullman, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

i bought this book for a class on speciation. however, as a botanist i was somewhat disappointed to find 70% of the papers cited throughout the book related only to drosophila. coyne and orr's personal research deals only with drosophila so this seems like their bias on display. they also use superlatives more often in relation to their own work than anyone else's. though it's a harmless habit, it can become annoying and detract from the rest of the content of the book. the book is a probably the best review of major developments in our understanding of speciation in the past several decades, but it isn't perfect.

21 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must have for speciation studies, December 18, 2004

By	Robert Hannon (Riverside, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is an excelent book for anyone interested in the processes of speciation. The book is written so that an advanced undergraduate can understand it, but a proffessor of evolution can still get insight from it. Theories of speciation are well laid out and discussed in-debth. A excelent addition for any professional book collection.