2003 Phylogenetic comparative methods and the geography of speciation.Trends Ecol. Evol

The geography of speciation has long been contentious. In recent years, phylogenetic approaches have been proposed to determine the geographical mode of speci-ation. If reliable, these methods not only provide a means of settling the debate about the geography of speciation, but also indicate that sympatric speciation is surprisingly common and that peripatric speciation is relatively rare. Similar to any phylogenetic inference, reconstructions of speciation mode are only useful if the underlying assumptions of the method are met. In this case, the key assumption is that the geographical range of both extant and ancestral species at the time of speciation can be inferred from present-day distri-butions. We discuss whether, and under what circum-stances, such assumptions could be met. We conclud