Natural selection promotes species formation

In an experiment that was first conducted in nature, evolutionary biologists at the University of British Columbia (UBC) have obtained evidence of one of Charles Darwin's foundational ideas: adapting to the environment. promote the formation of new species.

Patril Nosil, a postdoctoral researcher UBC has just published a work - saying: 'Only a single adaptive trait such as color can make a population advance to the process of new species formation. . But to perfect the process of forming a new species completely sometimes requires a lot of adaptation in many characteristics. The more populations there are in adapting to the particular habitat around it, the higher the ability to separate into many different species . '

The Timema (rod beetle) lives on many different plants.Sometimes the adaptive traits they acquire are not only camouflage, but also physical adaptations such as the elimination of harmful chemicals in the plant.(Photo: Cristina Sandoval, British University, Columbia)

Nosil studied rodents in Santa Barbara Chaparral (Southern California). Rods don't fly. They live on host plants and eat leaves. The different ecological forms of rodents are found in different plants with distinct color patterns corresponding to the characteristics of the host plants they live in. For example, cristinae-like insects live on coniferous trees with white stripes along their green bodies.

By separating some ecological forms from their host plants' environment and protecting some other forms of ecology from the attack of natural enemies, Nostril has found that only color patterns can start up. species formation. Whereas natural selection for additional adaptive characteristics - such as the ability to dispose of harmful chemicals in host plants - is a necessary condition to complete the process of species formation. color difference initiated.

Nosil said: 'Natural selection is still considered an evolutionary cause in an existing species while the genetic and geographical environment are the focus of most current studies on the dynamics of the process. species formation '.
According to Nostril, 'this is the first experiment conducted outside the laboratory to prove Darwin's hypothesis that natural selection is the key to species formation. The results are really interesting '.

The article 'Potential ecological dimension and ecological diversity in rodents' has just been published recently in PLoS One.