Hi guys
I’m currently working on an essay titled “The Role of Sympatric Speciation in Animal Evolution”
I’ve currently mentioned a few points on habitat differentiation (niche differentiation => temporal isolation => sub-population becoming reproductively isolated => new species)
I’m going to mention polyploidy (however it is insanely more common in plants than animals. Find it difficult to find examples of polyploidy in animals.)
I’m going to mention habitual differentiation (how females will can be very selective of their mates, i.e only go for a certain colour etc.)
Can you guys think of anything else which would fit in nicely? I’m struggling to find examples of sympatric speciation, and I think I’m struggling to find examples of sympatric speciation and not just speciation.
Thanks!
Blue!
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Role Of Sympatric Speciation In Animal Evolution?
Posted on September 27, 2012.
That’s a very interesting topic – the New World Warbler complex is nice to look into, since it’s been so heavily worked on, and certain island complexes in birds and other animals. The idea of niche partitioning is a nice one, but then that also wanders into allopatric stuff (geographic separation mediated by climate change, sea-level rise, etc.) for ‘full speciation’ (think warblers, finches, ceratopsians), because otherwise it looks pretty tough to make that last jump to complete isolation. It might pay to look at coevolution, such as the famous Heliconius/Passiflora complex. Then again, butterfly complexes in Africa and (I think) South America also show some interesting complexes and apparent diversifying – look up mimicry, swallowtails to get a start. It might also pay to look into brood parasitism; some of those birds (widowbirds, cuckoos, cowbirds) seem to be quite specific about the hosts they pick, and that may be the sort of thing that leads to separation and possible eventual speciation. I’m not sure how much good literature you’re going to be able to turn up: retrospective examination doesn’t usually show the details of the forces involved, and ‘in-progress’ sorts of studies seem unlikely to show full separation and speciation unless you’re very lucky. I would recommend looking into spiders, but the study of spider systematics is really in its infancy, and it might be really hard to turn up the sort of stuff you’d want to find.
Hawthorn flies adapt to introduction of apples, and the flies their predatory wasps diverge:http://phys.org/news153072466.html
Intracellular bacteria as speciation agents:http://as.vanderbilt.edu/rokaslab/pdfs/2…
Your right polyploidy is very common in plants but is known in animals; the invertebrates and even fish have known examples.
Polyploidy in fishhttp://www.springerlink.com/content/mm53…
Allopolyploidy, autopolyploidy and evolutionhttp://www.nature.com/nrm/journal/v5/n1/…
Polyploid Cyprinidae fish http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20700…
viscacha rat polyploidyhttp://polyploidy.org/index.php/Parade_o…
Sympatric plant speciation in Howea palm species due to resource partitioning.http://www.kew.org/scihort/directory/pro…http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v44…
Great Britain has a study of adaptive gene flow along migration paths as birds select nest sites suited to their trait combinations in resource partitioning.http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth…http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v43…
Finally you can discuss Hutchinson’s Ratio. Hutchinson’s Ratio is based on how species avoid conflict over a shared spectrum of resources. This ratio sets the limits the two can be similar; a ratio of mass or body parts important to their trophic function is 1 to 1.3. The ratio is not exact because it is a function of the number of competing species and the variation in their food gathering methods: two competitors very alike versus three competitors vaguely similar. Add to this the resource richness and actual dietary overlap.http://www.jstor.org/pss/3547014
H. Ratio Rules are seen in the resource partitioning of woodpeckershttps://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cac…