European flounders speciation in the Baltic Sea. Platichthys flesus

Divergent selection may initiate ecological speciation extremely rapidly. How often and at what pace ecological speciation proceeds to yield strong reproductive isolation is more uncertain. In this project we used genomic data from European flounders sampled in 13 locations from the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and the transition zone between these two regions. We show that demersal and pelagic flounders are a species pair arising from a recent event of ecological speciation, and investigate the genomics underpinning this rapid speciation event.