ABSTRACT
This book addresses the interplay of biomechanics and ecology. Ecology has long been recognized as an important factor in evolutionary diversification and speciation. Architects of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, particularly Mayr [1] and Dobzhansky [2], argued that spatial variation in ecological parameters should facilitate divergent trajectories of adaptive evolution among populations, at least among populations that are able to maintain some degree of reproductive isolation. This insight was overshadowed for several decades by attention to genetic mechanisms of divergence and stochastic models of speciation. Empirical and conceptual advances in recent years, however, have spurred a renewed emphasis on ecological causes of evolutionary diversification and speciation [3-5].
