© 2004 by The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology
Speciation
1 Department of Biology University of Washington Seattle, Washington 98195 E-mail: toby{at}u.washington.edu
Speciation. JERRY A. COYNE AND H. ALLEN ORR. Sinauer Associates, Inc., Sunderland, Massachusetts, 2004. ISBN 0-87893-091-4 (hardcover) 0-87893-089-2 (paperback).
Modern evolutionary thought traces its roots to a best-selling 19th Century book on speciation. In the circus of speciation literature, the three toughest acts to follow are Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859), Ernst Mayr's Animal Species and Evolution (1963), and Verne Grant's Plant Speciation (1971). It is remarkable that the late 20th Century explosion of research in evolutionary biology has, until now, occurred without inspiring a new book on the origin of species. Jerry Coyne and Allen Orr take center ring with Speciation, and give a performance that will earn their book a place on your shelf alongside the classic tomes of their predecessors.
Three aspects of Speciation make it unique and valuable. At the top of the list I would place objectivity. In a field known for contentiousness, dogmatism, and hyperbole, Coyne and Orr thoughtfully and dispassionately review the leading hypotheses surrounding speciation mechanisms, and the data supporting them. Many books and papers on speciation sound as though they were written by lawyers; Speciation reads like the work of judges. The authors have an enviable (and too rare) history of altering their mindset based upon careful analysis of all available evidence (e.g., Orr and Coyne, 1992 Am. Nat. 140: 725–742). Thus, students of Speciation are spared the chores of reading between the lines, separating fact from opinion, or wondering whether contradictory data were dismissed for the sake of advocacy. How refreshing!
Readers will appreciate the breadth and depth of this book. Chapter by chapter, every mode of speciation—allopatric, parapatric, sympatric, and variations upon them—is covered in incisive, rather than encyclopedic, style. Rich, nuanced discourses on the theory of, and experimental evidence for, various reproductive isolating mechanisms (e.g., ecological, behavioral, chromosomal, prezygotic, postzygotic) follow from the authors' use of the Biological Species Concept. [Mercifully, Coyne and Orr relegate the semantics and substance of species concepts to a concise Appendix, where a newcomer to the field might wish to begin reading.] Unlike its 20th Century antecedents, and in spite of the Drosophila-centric background of the authors, Speciation is not taxon-limited. Brilliant examples of speciation, and meaningful comparisons, are drawn from animals, plants, bacteria, and various other branches on the Tree of Life. Never ones to shy away from debates about "the big picture," Coyne and Orr devote the final chapters of Speciation to "Selection vs. Drift" and "Speciation and Macroevolution."
Scanning the 49 pages of References (printed in a font small enough to remind me of my advancing age), I wondered if Coyne and Orr had experienced the academic equivalent of Hercules' dilemma as he faced the venomous nine-headed Hydra, which sprouted two new heads for every one severed. With each journal article Coyne and Orr read, how many new citations were spawned, tracked down, and slain for our benefit? My own reading of the speciation literature leads me to believe that Coyne and Orr, like Hercules, also labored mightily in the Augean Stables.
Finally, this book highlights and prioritizes gaps in our current understanding of speciation. I particularly admire the authors for attempting to identify the most prevalent modes and mechanisms of speciation, guiding the effort of evolutionists towards the mountains and away from the molehills. Coyne and Orr suggest many new observations, experiments, and meta-analyses that would contribute to our knowledge of speciation. Graduate students in search of thesis projects will find Speciation to be an atlas of maps to buried treasure. Teachers of evolution will want to spice their lectures with the elegant theories and experiments dissected and annotated by Coyne and Orr. Those of us engaged in speciation research have much to think about, and even more to do.
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