Allopatric speciation

Monday, November 9, 2015

2:59 PM

Many species - consist of populations that are spread over wide geographical area populations look different
Rat snakes
Human races
Can we go from that to having different populations becoming different species
What would be required
Different populations of same species
Somehow become reproductively isolated from each other
Human races or rat snakes
Those aren't reproductively isolated
Members of all different races - produce fertile offspring
Genes flow between populations must be cut off - migrate to other race and
interbreed
Allopatric peciation
Physical barrier to gene flow occurs
Imagine 2 populations in slightly different geographic areas
Physical barrier that forms
Physically prevents individuals from going from one population to another
Next part of process
If those two populations isolated from each other - no gene flow between them

Persists for a long period of time

Even if barrier dissapears - they won't interbreed

Steps in process - 4 steps

Populations - spread over geographic area
Populations become separated by physical barrier for gene flow
Could be river
Mountain range
Prevents individuals from moving from one part to another
2nd part - barrier must be in place and must be separated for long time - no specific
time but fairly long
For step 3 Genetic differences between populations to emerge and increase
4th step if barrier is removed and can come back together - can encounter each
other but can't interbreed - have 2 species

Example of how this model might work

Indication of range of species

Different colors - winter and summer range- not concerned about that
Western - western and into central part
Eastern - eastern part of us but also found towards central part
Two species - ranges are somewhat different but some areas where they overlap
These birds look very similar
Difficult to tell apart when looking at them
Yellow breast with v shape
Look very similar
Fairly easy to imagine - single ancestral meadowlark species
Single species - ranged throughout the united states and north america in general
Something happened to split range into two - eastern and western population
While populations isolated from each other

Different - came back together (as they do now)

Not capable of breeding with each other
Don't look very different - species recognition can be appearance
Species recognition in birds also dependent on song
Birds look very similar
Songs quite different

Single population could be split

Don't know how speciation occurs
Can put together scenario
North america and many part of world - glaciation
Global temperatures dropped and glaciars moved from north to south

Lobe of glaciar through central iowa and stops right around near des moines is
Glaciar itself - physical barrier to animal migration
Global cooling - vegetation zones move around
Things are much colder to norht and species oculd have lived before live farther to
south

In this picture Left vegetation zone - been in existant when vegetation

On right - present vegetation zones

Certain kinds of habitats and vegetation

Scenario we are developing
Meadowlark
Didn't become two different species - more probable some glaciation within 2
million years caused this
Large ice sheet comes down from north
Physical barrier
Vegetation changes - isolate in different areas
Single population throughout north america
Separated into eastern and western component due to glacial interference
Populations remained isolated
Becaome different from each other

Human populations with language

In different areas develop different lnguage
Eastern vs western songs different - didn't recognize each other

Single species spread out over geographical area

Barrier forms
Prevents moving from one side to another
If removed and populations come back together and resume contact
Other possible outcomes too - not just different species
Resume interbreeding - recognize other population and mate and everything goes
back to way it was
Engage in limited interbreeding - hybrid zone
Individuals some of characteristics and other characteristics of other population
Often ask - should we consider the same species
Can interbreed with and do interbreed in hybrid zone and fertile zone
In many cases - judgement call
Widespread hybrid zone
Single species
Narrow - still consider different species

Overlapping ranges in central

Hybrid zone
Bullocks and baltimore
Interbreed In this area
Maybe we should call them one single species
Capable of interbreeding
Fairly narrow
Widespread
Just keep as 2 separate species
Sympatric speciation can occur
Allowpatric - single population into 2 - differences developed because they are
separated
Sympatric - within population - species in same place - two species form from one in
one location

Sympatric speciation
Bird species - within population birds with small beaks and birds with large beaks

And birds with beaks in between selected against

Continued selection of that sort
Small beaked and large beaked species
We think that sympatric speciation is probably fairly rare but some cases which
seem to lend themselves to this expectation

Selection for small beaked and large beaked birds but nothing inbetween
Single species but could become 2 species
If small beak only mated with small beak
And large beak only mated with large beak
Small beak reproductively isolated from large beak

Sympatric speciation did occur in chichlid fish

In africa - large freshwater lake - lake victoria

Lake dried up to nothing and refilled again

Last time it refilled - 12 thousand years ago
Nothing in lake - no fish in there
All fish there today
Established beyond 12 thousand years ago
Hundreds of species of cichlid fish
Gotten in lake from someplace else - hard to think that
Pretty isolated
Headwaters of nile river
More likely
Few species got into this lake and from them all over species came about
Single lake - big lake, but single lake
No physical barriers
Several things that happened
Disruptive selection

Where and what they feed on and from appearance

Very important in mating
All things combined to produce cichilid fishes in one place

Sympatric speciation
Very rare for it to occur
However in plants - much more common
Way it occurs in plants v3ery different from disruptive selection

In plants called polyploidy

Plants pollen from one plant gets on another plant
Hybridizing things
One of the ways it can occur by polyploidy
Mating between 2 different plant species
Imagine one of species called a and other we call b
Refer to a as whole set of chromosomes and b is whole sset of chromosomes for b
Hybdrid between species a and b
One set of chromosome from a and one set from species b
Senario AB
Problem with that when ab plant does meiosis
Chromosomes don't have anything to pair with
Chromosomes from a don't have something to pair with from b because b is
different
These plants are sterile
Can't make viable gametes

Spontanous doubling of chromosome number

Ab - if chromosomes double now aabb
No problem - can pair with
Now fertile - can produce viable gametes and come together and make viable
offspring
Can't mate back to parent species though
A parent - it'll produce hybrid aba - mixed up - 3 sets of chromosoems
Have abb - three sets of chromosomes - mismatch
New species - reproductively isolated from parent a and parent b
Estimates how common polypoloidy is in plants

Wheat is example
Agriculture began to develop 10 thousand years ago
Taking wild plants and domesticating them
Seeds from wild plants
Growing them in place where you want to grow and harvesting them
Many modifications occur
Wild wheat
At some point - crossed with 2nd species of wild wheat
Something people did on purpose or accident

See corn domesticated

Now unknown species of wild wheat
14ab hybrid sterile
Not capable of producing gametes
That particular thing - chromosome doubling event
Now has 28 chromosmoes
2 representatives of each homologous pairs of chromosomes
Another wheat species developed from combination of 2 species
Further infusions of genetic to the point of today common wheat 3 different species
genomes all combined

How requent and common one species to split into 2

Not know anwer to that
Some situations where it occurs frequently
Adaptive radiation
Cases where we are aware of - one linage split into two and other split into more in
short period of time
Something in common
Empty niches available
No competition from other species
Adaptive radiation - on islands

Probable of verbs on hawaiin islands - from single bird species - few representatives
out to isolated islands
Diversification into many species
Empty niches

When single bird species got to islands

Very few other birds present
Had run of islands to themselves
Echological niches for birds to occupy but no birds to occupy
Empty niches provide a place for them to go
After extinctions
65 million years ago - dinosaurs went extinct
Environment feeding
When dinosaurs went extinct
Mammals capable of diversifying into different echological roles
Third case - see species in new adaptive zone - case where niches not filled because
nothing exists to fill it
Evolution of flight in birds
Ability to fly around - new world for these organisms - tramendous adaptation after
evolution of flight
Earliest insects couldn't fly
After they could - diversified enourmously

Many species - gone extinct but many came from founder species
Beaks very different from each other
Long beaks - from deep flowers
Heavy beaks - eat seeds
Small - eat insect
Doing diverse echological things
Doing diverse echological niches
Those niches empty no tother birds there
Adaptive radiation that produced these species
Galapagos islands - darwins finches
Very finch like but different beaks - different echological niches

Prior to that time - mammal species around - after line - tremedous species
Idea here - dinosaurs went extinct all niches those dinosaurs occupied vacant and
possible for mammal species to move into them and speciation turned led to
diversity