On “Darwinian Mysteries” or Molluscs as Models in Evolutionary Biology: From Local Speciation to Global Radiation*
Abstract: Evolutionary biology is not only a biological subdiscipline but also a synthetic theory based on comprehensive scientific achievements. However, to date biodiversity, which is far from being fully documented, and the evolutionary processes leading to it are two of the least understood phenomena in evolutionary biology. Surprisingly, decades after the Modern Synthesis and centuries after the commencement of research in biological systematics, we are still unable to satisfyingly answer apparently simple yet fundamental questions. Here termed “Darwinian mysteries”, these are for example, how many species inhabit Earth today, what are species, where are they distributed, and how did biodiversity originate. While many contributions in malacology center around morphology, anatomy, and phylogenetic relationships within and among constituent taxa, molluscs only rarely have been utilized explicitly as models for the study of general aspects in evolutionary biology. However, this particular group, with it...