Abstrakt
Current theories of sympatric speciation usually presume the emergence of a key genetic variability which influences mating preferences and therefore precedes reproductive isolation. There are, however, numerous sound arguments that purely phenotypical behavioral traits which are culturally transmitted (e.g. dialects in songbirds) can lead to a formation of preferentially mating subpopulations; precursors of species.
We would like to argue that, to understand such a complex problem, it is handy to let a reasonable amount of anthropomorphism into our models. We are all organisms, results of complicated interactions of genes, epigenetic regulators, and cultural variants with historical experience.
We perceive ourselves as individuals who know very well how to orientate in the world using available cues and signals and whom to mate with. The same applies to animals.
Homogamy - pairing with self-resembling individuals - was described in humans as well as in many non-human animals. It was hypothesized that preferences for self resembling individuals could be facilitating incipient sympatric speciation in killer whales (Orcinus orca), blind mole rats (Spalax galili), or even European corn borers (Ostrinia nubinalis).
It is not hard to imagine that a species with more possible ecological strategies (and thus prone to sympatric speciation) develops competing "life philosophies" based on the preferred strategy. We can illustrate this comparing hares, which praise hard but unrestrained and independent life to rabbits, which tend to rely on a mutual help and collectivism.
This discrepancy could have lead to speciation in family Leporidae even multiple times since rabbits are not a monophyletic group. Sometimes when looking at two related species, it is not easy to approach similar phylogenetic event with fable-like narration, but that does not mean that some unverbalized "story" was not in the core of the recorded divergence.