Adaptive speciation: The role of natural selection in mechanisms of geographic and non-geographic speciation

Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36 (2):303-326 (2005)
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Abstract

Recent discussion of mechanism has suggested new approaches to several issues in the philosophy of science, including theory structure, causal explanation, and reductionism. Here, I apply what I take to be the fruits of the 'new mechanical philosophy' to an analysis of a contemporary debate in evolutionary biology about the role of natural selection in speciation. Traditional accounts of that debate focus on the geographic context of genetic divergence--namely, whether divergence in the absence of geographic isolation is possible (or significant). Those accounts are at best incomplete, I argue, because they ignore the mechanisms producing divergence and miss what is at stake in the biological debate. I argue that the biological debate instead concerns the scope of particular speciation mechanisms which assign different roles to natural selection at various stages of divergence. The upshot is a new interpretation of the crux of that debate--namely, whether divergence with gene flow is possible (or significant) and whether the isolating mechanisms producing it are adaptive

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Jason M. Byron
Duquesne University

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References found in this work

Thinking about mechanisms.Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden & Carl F. Craver - 2000 - Philosophy of Science 67 (1):1-25.
Animal Species and Evolution.Ernst Mayr - 1963 - Belknap of Harvard University Press.
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.Charles Darwin - 1897 - New York: Heritage Press. Edited by George W. Davidson.

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