Data from: Speciation has a spatial scale that depends on levels of gene flow

Area is generally assumed to affect speciation rates, but work on the spatial context of speciation has focused mostly on patterns of range overlap between emerging species rather than on questions of geographical scale. A variety of geographical theories of speciation predict that the probability of speciation occurring within a given region should (1) increase with the size of the region and (2) increase as the spatial extent of intraspecific gene flow becomes smaller. Using a survey of speciation events on isolated oceanic islands for a broad range of taxa, we find evidence for both predictions. The probability of in situ speciation scales with island area in bats, carnivorous mammals, birds, flowering plants, lizards, butterflies and moths, and snails. Ferns are an exception to these findings, but they exhibit high frequencies of polyploid and hybrid speciation, which are expected to be scale independent. Furthermore, the minimum island size for speciation correlates across groups with the strength of intraspecific gene flow, as is estimated from a meta‐analysis of published population genetic studies. These results indicate a general geographical model of speciation rates that are dependent on both area and gene flow. The spatial scale of population divergence is an important but neglected determinant of broad‐scale diversity patterns.物种形成速率通常被认为受面积影响，但现有关于物种形成空间背景的研究，大多聚焦于新兴物种间的分布重叠模式，而非地理尺度相关问题。多种物种形成的地理学理论预测，给定区域内发生物种形成的概率应满足两个规律：一是随区域面积增大而升高，二是随种内基因流的空间范围缩小而提升。我们通过对广泛分类群的孤立大洋岛屿物种形成事件进行调研，为上述两个预测提供了实证支持。蝙蝠、食肉目哺乳动物、鸟类、显花植物、蜥蜴、蝶与蛾等鳞翅目昆虫以及蜗牛的原位物种形成概率，均随岛屿面积增大而呈尺度递增关系。蕨类植物是这一规律的例外，其物种形成多伴随多倍化与杂交事件，而这类物种形成过程理论上不受尺度影响。此外，通过对已发表种群遗传学研究的元分析估算种内基因流强度，我们发现不同类群对应的物种形成最小岛屿面积，与该类群的种内基因流强度显著相关。上述结果揭示了一个通用的物种形成速率地理学模型：该速率同时取决于面积与种内基因流。种群分化的空间尺度，是调控大尺度多样性格局的重要却长期被忽视的决定因素。