B.10C Living Together Does Not Always Work – 9.1 – 02
Students were gathering excitedly in Professor Pickens science class. He was just back from working with a group of evolutionary biologists who are studying the cichlid populations found in Lake Apoyo, a remote volcanic lake in Nicaragua. Students wanted to know what interesting things he learned and of course they anticipated beautiful images that he always brought back.
“Today we will talk about speciation,” said Professor Pickens, “especially sympatric speciation.” And so began their journey into the amazing realm of forming new species through the evolutionary process. Speciation happens when groups within a species, for various reasons, are reproductively isolated from each other.
There are different ways that speciation can occur. Sympatric speciation is unique and can be controversial. In sympatric speciation, the subpopulations occupy the same area, but are genetically different enough so that they can no longer breed together, and are therefore considered to be two different species.
Sympatric speciation occurs when there are no physical barriers separating 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, the crater lake Professor Pickens visited.