Evolutionary Biology of Transient Unstable Populations

An overview of speciation theory reveals an increasingly held view that many events leading to the origin of new species occur in transient, unstable populations. A transient, unstable population should be under­ stood as a fast episodic phase in a population subjected to genetic and environmental factors that tend to disrupt its cohesive, balanced genome architecure, thus enhancing its probability to produce a new species. Striking the core of Darwinian thought, some authors claim that the...