Some Species Evolve Side by Side
By Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News
Feb. 14, 2006 Modern genetics has uncovered new species evolving in situations that would even impress Darwin.
The current journal Nature features two different cases involving palm trees and lake fish in which genetics have shown single species splitting into two new species while living side by side.
The most common sort of evolution is thought to happen when different groups of the same species are separated by some physical barrier, and then adapt to different environments without any chance of interbreeding.
Eventually the populations diverge and adapt to differing lifestyles so much they canât successfully interbreed. Thatâs what biologists call allopatric speciation.
But the two new cases are strong candidates for the more subtle "sympatric" speciation, in which something as simple as flowering at a different time of year or preferring a different type of food can eventually lead individuals of the same species living side-by-side to evolve away from each other and create new and different species.
By Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News
Feb. 14, 2006 Modern genetics has uncovered new species evolving in situations that would even impress Darwin.
The current journal Nature features two different cases involving palm trees and lake fish in which genetics have shown single species splitting into two new species while living side by side.
The most common sort of evolution is thought to happen when different groups of the same species are separated by some physical barrier, and then adapt to different environments without any chance of interbreeding.
Eventually the populations diverge and adapt to differing lifestyles so much they canât successfully interbreed. Thatâs what biologists call allopatric speciation.
But the two new cases are strong candidates for the more subtle "sympatric" speciation, in which something as simple as flowering at a different time of year or preferring a different type of food can eventually lead individuals of the same species living side-by-side to evolve away from each other and create new and different species.
