Interactions between species have long been
hypothesized to play a central role in biological diversification. For
instance, variation in beak morphology among Darwin's finches is
thought to be the result of competition among species for scarce
resources. Despite the perceived importance of these biological
interactions, however, virtually all existing mathematical approaches
to studying trait diversification assume lineages evolve independently
of one another, and thus preclude coevolution. In this talk, a
novel mathematical approach for integrating coevolution among lineages
into models of trait diversification will be developed. Analyses of the
resulting models will reveal that coevolution plays an important role
in trait diversification over macroevolutionary timescales, leaving a
unique and potentially detectable signature in its wake.
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