Oxford Surveys In Evolutionary Biology: Volume 8: 1991 (oxford Surveys In Evolutionary Biology)

OXFORD SURVEYS IN EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY Volume 8 This page intentionally left blank OXFORD SURVEYS IN EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY EDITED BY DOUGLAS FUTUYMA JAMS ANTONOVICS Volume 8 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1992 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan © Oxford University Press, 1992 Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data (LC Card Number 86-641417) ISBN 0-19-507623-0 9 87654321 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Preface We are pleased to present, as the opening essay in this volume, Professor Ernst Mayr's response to our suggestion that a personal history of events and ideas that influenced his thinking, and that reflect the development of evolutionary thought for more than half a century, would be of enduring interest. Both the scientific content of Professor Mayr's essay and the anecdotes, interactions, and personalities that figure in it will interest every biologist and historian of evolutionary biology. There is a conceptual relationship between Mayr's emphasis on the role of genetic coadaptation in speciation, and Sewall Wright's conviction of the reality and importance of gene interactions. Michael Wade, using a statistical framework, contrasts Wright's and Fisher's views on the likely role of gene interactions, and concludes that such interactions warrant more attention by theoreticians and empiricists alike. Moving from genetic to ecological considerations that bear on speciation, the chapter by Mark Taper and Ted Case reviews the evidence for, and theory of, character displacement. Taper and Case develop theory suggesting that the conditions for character displacement may be broader than some previous models have implied. If, as Mayr has proposed, the capacity for coexistence is an important facet of speciation, the issue of character displacement among competitors should be understood in depth. More detailed examinations of the origins of certain species are presented in the two chapters that follow. Wen-Hsiung Li and Lori Sadler examine evidence from variation in DNA sequences on the history of Homo sapiens, addressing in particular the question of whether or not our species has experienced a substantial bottleneck in population size, and whether the characteristics of modern Homo sapiens throughout the world are attributable to replacement of Eurasian by African populations or to gene flow from Africa. Because of their global significance, crop plants such as rice have been probably more extensively studied with respect to genetics and origins than any naturally occurring species. Studies on crop plants, when interpreted or designed in an evolutionary context, can therefore provide detailed and comprehensive information of a kind that is lacking for other species. In rice, there emerges a rich portrait, painted by Hiroko Morishima, Yoshio Sano, and Hiko-Ichi Oka, of speciation as a process that can involve the interplay of adaptation and coadaptation with genelevel phenomena such as meiotic drive. Pollen killers and gamete eliminators add a star-wars-like dra