Abstract
This chapter examines evolutionary branching in sexual populations. As sexual populations converge to what would be a branching point in clonal models, splitting obviously becomes a problem, because mating between different marginal phenotypes generally creates intermediate phenotypes. Through segregation and recombination, sexual reproduction can prevent the establishment of diverging phenotypic clusters in randomly mating populations. To allow for a phenotypic split, mating needs to be assortative with respect to the ecological trait that is under disruptive selection. Thus, the question of evolutionary branching in sexual populations, that is, of adaptive speciation, is intimately tied to questions about the evolution of assortative mating. If evolutionary branching occurs in sexual populations due to the presence of assortative mating mechanisms, the diverging phenotypic clusters will show prezygotic reproductive isolation at least to some extent, and hence they can be viewed as representing incipient species.
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