Current plant speciation research: unravelling the processes and mechanisms behind the evolution of reproductive isolation barriers

Abstract

First paragraph: Explaining what species are and how they arise has been at the center of biological research since the first evolutionary concepts were developed by Buffon, Lamarck, and Darwin (Tirard,2010). With the widespread acceptance of the biological species concept, according to which ‘species are a group of interbreeding natural populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups’ (Mayr,1996), much recent speciation research has focused on the processes and mechanisms involved in the evolution of reproductive isolation barriers (Coyne & Orr,2004). The molecular basis of these isolating barriers was known in only a few instances at the time of the Plant Speciation New Phytologist Symposium held in 2003 (Rieseberg & Wendel,2004). However, the last decade has witnessed major advances to current knowledge on this and other aspects of plant speciation research as was made clear at the recent European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) workshop ‘Mechanisms of plant speciation’ held in 2015 at Åkersberga, Sweden.