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The most common reason comes down to economics. Different genres sell in different amounts, and romance sells more than any other genre, possibly more than all other genres combined.
If Jane Shmoe writes SF under her own name, and then writes a romance, it's in her best interest not to release that romance under exactly the same name. She may want to release it as Jane Doe Shmoe, but not Jane Shmoe.
The problem is order tracking. Bookstore chains base their orders of new books on how well that author's previous book sold. So if Jane Shmoe's first romance sold a hundred thousand copies, and the SF book she wrote next sold thirty thousand copies, her next romance will be ordered based on the thirty thousand sales of her SF novel, not the hundred thousand sales of her previous romance. She's just stuck her foot in her mouth and then shot herself in the foot.
Unless your name is huge you want different names for different genres so the slower selling genre doesn't drag your more profitable genres down. It doesn't have to be much, often an initial or a middle name will do it, but you don't want the computers linking your romance novel's orders to your SF novel's sales.
You really don't.
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