ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2013
Possible incipient sympatric ecological speciation in blind mole rats (Spalax).
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 57 citations in OpenAlex.
- Variants ofLife science alliance · 2026Article
- Rapid genome modifications including chromosomal fusions and large-scale inversions are key features in Arctic codfish species.Genome biology · 2026Article
- Aquifer-Mediated Speciation in Cave-Adapted Fishes.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2026Article
- Genomic signatures of subterranean lifestyle and ecological adaptation in Myospalax.BMC biology · 2025Article
- Conservation status of the blind mole rat populations in Hungary (Rodentia: Spalacinae: Nannospalax) revisited.Biologia futura · 2023Review
- Sympatric Speciation in Mole Rats and Wild Barley and Their Genome Repeatome Evolution: A Commentary.Advanced genetics (Hoboken, N.J.) · 2022Article
- Incipient Sympatric Speciation and Evolution of Soil Bacteria Revealed by Metagenomic and Structured Non-Coding RNAs Analysis.Biology · 2022Article
- Sympatric speciation of the spiny mouse from Evolution Canyon in Israel substantiated genomically and methylomically.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Host diet shapes functionally differentiated gut microbiomes in sympatric speciation of blind mole rats in Upper Galilee, Israel.Frontiers in microbiology · 2022Article
- Adaptation of mammals to hypoxia.Animal models and experimental medicine · 2021Review
- Multi-Omics Analysis Reveals the Mechanism Underlying the Edaphic Adaptation in Wild Barley at Evolution Slope (Tabigha).Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2021Article
- Local Adaptation of Bitter Taste and Ecological Speciation in a Wild Mammal.Molecular biology and evolution · 2021Article
- Genome evolution of blind subterranean mole rats: Adaptive peripatric versus sympatric speciation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Genomic and Phenotypic Divergence in Wild Barley Driven by Microgeographic Adaptation.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2020Article
- Incipient sympatric speciation in wild barley caused by geological-edaphic divergence.Life science alliance · 2020Article
- Transcriptome-Wide Patterns of the Genetic and Expression Variations in Two Sympatric Schizothoracine Fishes in a Tibetan Plateau Glacier Lake.Genome biology and evolution · 2020Article
- Phylogeny and biogeography of the African Bathyergidae: a review of patterns and processes.PeerJ · 2019Article
- Speciation in sympatry with ongoing secondary gene flow and a potential olfactory trigger in a radiation of Cameroon cichlids.Molecular ecology · 2018Article
- Mito-nuclear discordance across a recent contact zone for California voles.Ecology and evolution · 2018Article
- Transcriptomes Divergence ofFrontiers in genetics · 2018Article
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Sympatric speciation has been controversial since it was first proposed as a mode of speciation. Subterranean blind mole rats (Spalacidae) are considered to speciate allopatrically or peripatrically. Here, we report a possible incipient sympatric adaptive ecological speciation in Spalax galili (2n = 52). The study microsite (0.04 km(2)) is sharply subdivided geologically, edaphically, and ecologically into abutting barrier-free ecologies divergent in rock, soil, and vegetation types. The Pleistocene Alma basalt abuts the Cretaceous Senonian Kerem Ben Zimra chalk. Only 28% of 112 plant species were shared between the soils. We examined mitochondrial DNA in the control region and ATP6 in 28 mole rats from basalt and in 14 from chalk habitats. We also sequenced the complete mtDNA (16,423 bp) of four animals, two from each soil type. Remarkably, the frequency of all major haplotype clusters (HC) was highly soil-biased. HCI and HCII are chalk biased. HC-III was abundant in basalt (36%) but absent in chalk; HC-IV was prevalent in basalt (46.5%) but was low (20%) in chalk. Up to 40% of the mtDNA diversity was edaphically dependent, suggesting constrained gene flow. We identified a homologous recombinant mtDNA in the basalt/chalk studied area. Phenotypically significant divergences differentiate the two populations, inhabiting different soils, in adaptive oxygen consumption and in the amount of outside-nest activity. This identification of a possible incipient sympatric adaptive ecological speciation caused by natural selection indirectly refutes the allopatric alternative. Sympatric ecological speciation may be more prevalent in nature because of abundant and sharply abutting divergent ecologies.
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