For some reason I am finding it harder to get published as I go on, not easier. I suspect I am getting dumber as I age. However, I just had a paper published in Biology and Philosophy:
Wilkins, John S. 2007. The dimensions, modes and definitions of species and speciation. Biology and Philosophy 22 (2):247 - 266.
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Continuing on from my last post, let's consider the modes of speciation that are called into account for the existence of species.
Here is a list taken from Sergey Gavrilets, which I put in my most recent paper in Biology and Philosophy (2007).
Vicariant – divergent selection and stochastic…
Congrats, John!
Do you have a PDF you can e-mail to people?
Not yet. I am not at work, and so can't access it.
When you do get access to it I'd really like to read it, if you could send a pdf this way!
Congratulations!
Perhaps you need to start your own journal now, though, something like the Journal of Speciation.
Good job!
Ian - if he does, I want to be on the editorial board. Just so I can start a big argument, and then use that as an excuse to go off and found my rival journal.
Our library didn't give us access yesterday, but now they do, hurrah! So, I can now authoritatively state that it's a nice paper, and one that would be good to give to graduate students. It might even make them think.
There are a couple of typos, this is the one that stopped me for a moment:
One thought (one more important than nits): if Gavrilets is correct about the shape of fitness landscapes, how can we distinguish bacterial species? You accept that quasi-species exist, but you invoke a different fitness landscape for them, without comment. Gavrilets' solution is to imply that a lineage hasn't had time to drift along the ridges to reach other lineages (p415 of Fitness Landscapes), but he just asserts this, without any deeper consideration. I'm sceptical, until I see a demonstration that this works (bacteria will have had plenty of time to explore a fitness landscape if it hasn't changed in time, so the story presumably involves changing landscapes and extinctions. All of a sudden, it's looking more complicated. Damn).
Oh, and you also state that your book is "forthcoming". Does this mean you've finally found a publisher?
Bob