Evolution And Speciation In Animals

This book represents the first attempt to quantify environmental factors and life history traits that accelerate or decelerate species diversity in animals. About 15%, 8% and 77% of species are distributed in marine (70% of earth's surface), freshwater (< 1%) and terrestrial (~ 29%) habitats. Hence, the terra firma fosters more diversity. The harsh hadal, desert and elevated montane habitats restrict diversity to 0.5-4.2%. Costing more time and energy, osmotrophic and suspension modes of food acquisition limit diversity to < 20%. In minor phyletics, evolution has proceeded from a 'wrong combination' of low motility and gonochorism to sessility and hermaphroditism. The motile major phyletics are more speciose (166,279 species/phylum) than the latter (1,975 species/phylum). As evolution and speciation are driven by motility, sessility is limited to 2.9% animals. Selfing hermaphrodites (0.9%), parthenogens (< 0.6%) and clonals (~ 2%) miss meiosis and/or fertilization. Unable to...