A statistical model for bacterial speciation triggered by lateral gene transfer

The process of bacterial speciation has been a major unresolved issue in the study of bacterial evolution. It has been proposed that lateral gene transfer and homologous recombination play critical and complementary roles in speciation.{\footnote{ J. G. Lawrence, Theor. Popul. Biol. {\bf 61}, 449(2002).}} We introduce a statistical model, of a population, for the evolution under lateral gene transfer and local homologous recombination. We examine the evolutionary dynamics and its dependence on various evolutionary operators.