Given that the biological data sets can be confidently assumed to have been structured by speciation, which is a branching process, our assumption was that, if cultural evolution is dominated by blending processes, the fit between the bifurcating tree model and the cultural data sets should be significantly worse than the fit between the bifurcating tree model and the biological data sets.
Genotypic methods also allow for speciation, which is a limitation of culture [ 26].
One particular phenomenon that appears to rely on a mix of these evolutionary processes is hybrid speciation, which is the formation of a new species as a result of hybridization between two parental species (Mallet 2007; Abbott and Rieseberg 2012).
While the original CINS paper suggests that it is a test only of natural selection knowledge, in fact it includes some questions about speciation, which is widely recognized as a macroevolutionary concept (Futuyma 2009).
Below, I focus on the geographic aspects of speciation, which is correctly viewed as an extended process through time, rather than an instantaneous event.
Unravelling processes that underlie population divergence is a crucial step towards elucidating the origin and maintenance of biodiversity [ 1], and towards understanding the genetic basis of speciation, which is one of the most fundamental goals in evolutionary genetics [ 2].
Reticulate evolution is primarily driven by hybrid speciation, which is common among plants [ 83] but also occurs among animals, particularly including fish [ 84], amphibians, and several invertebrates [ 85– 85].
These differences might be due to stochastic reasons, such as different rates of mutation between the two genes, or horizontal transfer events post speciation, which is suggested by the differences in the gene order of the clusters (Fig. 2).
In this study, we concentrated on the relationship of genes due to lineage-specific duplication(s) and skipped the time-point of the duplication in relation to speciation, which is necessary to call them paralogues [ 14].
The evolution of specific host races is thought to represent the incipient stage of sympatric speciation which is perhaps best exemplified through the apple maggot fly, Rhagoletis pomonella Walsh (Diptera: Tephritidae) [ 56- 58].
An index value of differentiation among populations greater than 0.25 is considered high, and Index values greater than 0.5, mean that populations are so different that they could even be in the process of speciation, which is not supposed to be the case with J. curcas [ 54].
