Major botanical advances often suffer the worst of fates – the scientific community ignores them until they are independently "discovered" or confirmed by zoologists. For example, the principles of inheritance, initially worked out in the garden pea, were not generally accepted until verified in animals. Likewise, the discovery of mobile genetic elements in maize by Barbara McClintock was largely ignored until similar observations were made in bacteria, yeast and flies. More recently, botanical claims for a prominent role for major genes in adaptation were received with skepticism until similar findings in animals prompted a reevaluation. A similar rediscovery process is ongoing in the area of speciation. Zoologists are finding that in animals, like plants, genomes are not as coadapted as previously believed, and that species barriers often are porous. They also are finding evidence that, like plants, speciation in animals is primarily driven by divergent selection and that speciation can take place in the presence of gene flow. Finally, evidence that hybridization has played a significant role in animal evolution is emerging, providing a complement to pioneering studies of plants. This pattern of discovery indicates the need for botanists to play a more prominent role in the ongoing intellectual debates in evolutionary biology.

Key words: coadaptation, hybridization, selection, speciation