Speciation in the sea: Overview of the symposium and discussion of future directions

Abstract

Speciation remains one of the most controversial and least understood topics in evolution. About 75 of the earth's surface is covered by oceans. However, most of what we currently know about speciation is strongly biased toward terrestrial and freshwater organisms. Here, we discuss some of the major advances of the past two decades in our understanding of speciation in the sea and outline promising future directions that were gathered during the 2011 SICB Symposium "Speciation in the Sea." © The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. All rights reserved.