Reanalysis suggests that genomic islands of speciation are due to reduced diversity, not reduced gene flow

The metaphor of 'genomic islands of speciation' was first used to describe heterogeneous differentiation among loci between the genomes of closely related species. The biological model proposed to explain these differences was that the regions showing high levels of differentiation were resistant to gene flow between species, while the remainder of the genome was being homogenized by gene flow and consequently showed lower levels of differentiation. However, the conditions under which such differentiation can occur at multiple unlinked loci are restrictive; additionally, essentially, all previous analyses have been carried out using relative measures of divergence, which can be misleading when regions with…

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  National Science Foundation

  Awards: MCB-1127059, 1127059