Question

Argue the point that true sympatric speciation is a theoretical process and not a reality in natural populations.

Answer 1

Ans: It is though that, the new species have evolved from a genetic divergent population from a single parent species and inhabiting the same geographical region leads to creation of new species. This is because the gene flow operating in a randomly population would tend to break down differences between the incipient species. In other words, to select a species, one should think of selecting species/population which is diverging and the gene flow from their ancestors should be very less or negligible. In case of speciation, we can find reduced gene flow between the populations except in sympatric speciation. Because the randomly mating populations of the same geography are able to inbreed and may not be produce a single diverge species. Sympatric speciation refers to the formation of two or more descendant species from a single ancestral species all occupying the same geographic location. This type of speciation is not regular and it is very often in the nature and it is very difficult to prove the sympatric speciation was possible. Because it was impossible to observe it happening. It was believed that, there were no evident explanations how two species could emerge from one if the subspecies were able to inbreed. Though there are evidences for divergence/gene flow in sympatric speciation, how often it may actually occur in nature and how much of life’s diversity is the today debate. The hard fact is that, the in fully sympatric species really do experience diverging selection due to competition in the nature. The evidences tell us little about how often sympatry actually results in speciation in a more typical context. The burdon now lies on providing evidence for sympatric divergence occurring in non-isolated habitats. It is not known how much of the earth’s diversity it could be responsible for. It is not known how much of the earth’s diversity it could be responsible for. Meanwhile, some claim that much of the earth’s diversity could be due to speciation without geographic isolation and also it is very difficult in supporting a sympatric speciation hypothesis has always been that an allopatric scenario could always be invented and those can be hard to rule out.

With all this we can say true sympatric speciation is a theoretical process and not a reality in natural population.