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.
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