The process of adaptive radiation—the proliferation of species from a single ancestor and diversification into many ecologically different forms—has been of great interest to evolutionary biologists since Darwin. Since the middle of the last century, ecological opportunity has been invoked as a potential key to understanding when and how adaptive radiation occurs. Interest in the topic of ecological opportunity has accelerated as research on adaptive radiation has experienced a resurgence, fueled in part by advances in phylogenetic approaches to studying evolutionary diversification. Nonetheless, what the term actually means, much less how it mechanistically leads to adaptive diversification, is currently debated; whether the term has any predictive value or is a heuristic useful only for post hoc explanation also remains unclear. Recent recognition that evolutionary change can occur rapidly and on a timescale commensurate with ecological processes suggests that it is time to synthesize ecological and evo...

中文翻译：

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生态机会与适应性辐射

自达尔文以来，适应性辐射的过程——物种从单一祖先的增殖和多样化为许多生态不同的形式——一直是进化生物学家的极大兴趣。自上世纪中叶以来，生态机会被认为是了解适应性辐射何时以及如何发生的潜在关键。随着适应性辐射研究的复苏，对生态机会主题的兴趣加速了，部分原因是研究进化多样化的系统发育方法的进步。尽管如此，该术语的实际含义，更不用说它如何机械地导致适应性多样化，目前仍在争论中。该术语是否具有任何预测价值或是否仅对事后解释有用的启发式方法也尚不清楚。