Specifically, I test the hypothesis that interspecific competition has driven repeated patterns of morphological change in each species across distinct regions, resulting in parallel evolution of character displacement in regions of co-occurrence.
This new approach is based on the numerical solution of a special type of eigenvalue problems that takes into account the complementarity character of the pair (displacement, obstacle reaction) at each unilateral support.
These results demonstrate the scalable character of the progressive displacement of the different lineages from their common stem/progenitor cells.
When comparing degree of tolerance in conjunction with levels of syntopy, we found evidence of character displacement in this trait.
Phenotypic plasticity could thus facilitate the evolution of character displacement in the presence of gene flow [ 80].
88, 99– 102 Highly accessible beneficial mutations can lead to antigenic branching, 100 a form of character displacement suggested in the recent evolution of the hemagglutinin of influenza B. 103 Strong competition between strains, potentially from nonspecific immune responses, can restrict diversity.
This is an example not only of ecotypic differentiation but also of character displacement.
In collaboration with W.L. Brown, he developed the concept of "character displacement," a process in which populations of two closely related species, after first coming into contact with each other, undergo rapid evolutionary differentiation in order to minimize the chances of both competition and hybridization between them.
The classic pattern to recognize the existence of character displacement is to observe the degree of phenotypic divergence in allopatric and sympatric populations of the same species pair: when sympatric trait values are more extreme than values occurring in allopatry, there is evidence for character displacement (Brown and Wilson 1956).
The purpose of this study is to examine patterns of character displacement between P. jordani and P. teyahalee across multiple geographic transects to determine whether in fact they are concordant.
