Got any good quotes from Hamlet...

...other than, you know. Cause the folks at Science Daily have scooped me on "To evolve or not to evolve", in their press release on speciation in the small reef fish known as hamlets. A new paper in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography looks at what hamlets have to tell us about evolution and speciation in the marine environment. There are ten Caribbean species of hamlets, a group of small, colorful seabass in the genus Hypoplectrus. Particular reefs may have several species, but most species are found only in specific locales. That's the blue hamlet (H. gemma) at right, and it's found only on Florida reefs. We'll see them in abundance on the Subtropical trip in November.

It has long been believed that different hamlet species had arisen following geographic isolation, perhaps the result of lower sea levels, and then been mixed when sea levels rose again. The new results, however, do not support an allopatric speciation model. Instead, it appears that the different hamlet species may have arisen sympatrically, perhaps as the result of ecological isolation. I have to admit that the abstract is not enough here - I think I'm going to have to get a copy of the whole thing.