Speciation and the “shifting balance” in a continuous population

Abstract

Shifts between adaptive peaks, caused by sampling drift, are involved in both speciation and adaptation via Wright's “shifting balance.” We use techniques from statistical mechanics to calculate the rate of such transitions for a population in a single panmictic deme and for a population which is continuously distributed over one- and two-dimensional regions. This calculation applies in the limit where transitions are rare. Our results indicate that stochastic divergence is feasible despite free gene flow, provided that neighbourhood size is low enough. In two dimensions, the rate of transition depends primarily on neighbourhood size N and only weakly on selection pressure (≈ s k exp(− cN)), where k is a number determined by the local population structure, in contrast with the exponential dependence on selection pressure in one dimension (≈exp(− cN √ s)) or in a single deme (≈exp(− cNs)). Our calculations agree with simulations of a single deme and a one-dimensional population.