B.10C Living Together Does Not Always Work – 02

 

Students were gathering excitedly in Professor Pickens’ science class. He was just back from Nicaragua. He was working there with a group of scientists who are studying the cichlid populations found in Lake Apoyo. Students wanted to know what interesting things he had learned. They also looked forward to seeing beautiful images that he always showed.

“Today,  we will talk about sympatric speciation” said Professor Pickens. He said that speciation happens when groups within a species cannot interbreed with each other.

There are different ways that speciation can occur. In sympatric speciation, the two populations occupy the same area. But they cannot interbreed. So, they are classified as two different species.

Sympatric speciation could occur due to behavioral isolation. This type of isolation could be due to different mating calls or courtship rituals. It could be temporal isolation. This is a type of separation caused because of differences in mating season.

In sympatric speciation there are no physical barriers that separate the members of the different species from each other. So, what causes two distinct species to develop? To answer this, we go back to the cichlid populations of Lake Apoyo.