New evidence linking natural selection to speciation

[bascule]

http://www.pheedo.info/archives/000302.html

 

They appear to have linked interbreedability with diversification and environment suitedness

[Airmid]

Errrr.......

[doG]

http://www.pheedo.info/archives/000302.html

 

They appear to have linked interbreedability with diversification and environment suitedness

Somehow your link changed:eek:

 

The original news release is here.....

 

New evidence that natural selection is a general driving force behind the origin of species

 

NASHVILLE' date=' Tenn. – Charles Darwin would undoubtedly be both pleased and chagrined.

 

The famous scientist would be pleased because a study published online this week provides the first clear evidence that natural selection, his favored mechanism of evolution, drives the process of species formation in a wide variety of plants and animals. But he would be chagrined because it has taken nearly 150 years to do so.

 

What Darwin did in his revolutionary treatise, “On the Origin of Species,” was to explain how much of the extraordinary variety of biological traits possessed by plants and animals arises from a single process, natural selection. Since then a large number of studies and observations have supported and extended his original work. However, linking natural selection to the origin of the 30 to 100 million different species estimated to inhabit the earth, has proven considerably more elusive....

 

....“The fact that the association is statistically significant despite the crudeness of our estimates suggests that the true biological association is very strong,” Funk says. “Darwin’s famous book was called ‘On the Origin of Species,’ but it was really about natural selection on traits rather than species formation. Since our study suggests that natural selection is a general cause of species formation, it seems that Darwin chose an appropriate title after all.”

 

For more news about Vanderbilt research, visit Exploration, Vanderbilt’s online research magazine, at http://www.exploration.vanderbilt.edu

 

[/quote']

[Milken]

Is it just me or did he say everything but exactly what we wanted to hear?

[qed]

They appear to have linked interbreedability with diversification and environment suitedness

 

There was an article in the german version of scientific american a few years ago, where they showed that an oocytic parasite causes reproductive isolation among insects. Different strains of the bacteria alter the cytoplasmic compatibility of a population, leading to a division into compatible sub-populations. I cant remember the name of the bacterium, but it acts among a huge variety of insects and has been considered as an explanation for the enormous diversity and radiation among insects.

 

http://www.rochester.edu/college/BIO/faculty/Werren.html