Synergy between assortative mating and allopatry favor speciation in endemic Galapagos birds

Integrating new data with older reports on the behavior of small land-birds in the Galapagos archipelago reveal that geographic isolation of population together with behavioral segregation of populations produce a synergy that is more likely to produce speciation than any of those factors on its own. This result expands our understanding of assortative mating, based on computer experiments of biological evolution, showing that assortation favors speciation in both sympatric and allopatric populations.