Special Campus Community Lecture

In the “Origin of Species” Charles Darwin established the scientific basis for understanding how evolution occurs by natural selection. To explain how new species form he envisioned a three-step process involving colonization of a new area, divergence through natural selection, and the formation of a barrier to interbreeding between divergent lineages. The challenge for us is the same as the challenge for Darwin, to reconstruct evolutionary history and interpret it. In this talk we show how, by combining the fields of ecology, behaviour and genomics, we have been able to reveal the role of natural selection and hybridization in the formation of new species.