Divergent natural selection promotes immigrant inviability at early and late stages of evolutionary divergence

Natural selection's role in speciation has been of fundamental importance since Darwin first outlined his theory. Recently, work has focused on understanding how selection drives trait divergence, and subsequently reproductive isolation. “Immigrant inviability,” a barrier that arises from selection against immigrants in their nonnative environment, appears to be of particular importance. Although immigrant inviability is likely ubiquitous, we know relatively little about how selection acts on traits to drive immigrant inviability, and how important immigrant inviability is at early‐versus‐late stages of divergence. We present a study evaluating the role of predation in the evolution of immigrant inviability in recently diverged population pairs and a well‐established species pair of Brachyrhaphis fishes. We evaluate performance in a high‐predation environment by assessing survival in the presence of a predator, and swimming endurance in a low‐predation environment. We find strong signatures of local adaptation and immigrant inviability of roughly the same magnitude both early and late in divergence. We find remarkably conserved selection for burst‐speed swimming (important in predator evasion), and selection for increased size in low‐predation environments. Our results highlight the consistency with which selection acts during speciation, and suggest that similar factors might promote initial population differentiation and maintain differentiation at late stages of divergence.