Speciation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Speciation - Essay Example These two processes  led to  the behavioural speciation between Sciuirus apbios and Sciuirus vulgaris. Allopatric speciation was a consequence of the geographic isolation of the Caribbean Sea. Initially, St. Kitts and Nevis were a single island and there only existed one squirrel species. However, there was the divergence of the initial island, and there emerged two small islands that contained different species of the first squirrel species. The diagram below best describes allopatric speciation: The bottleneck effect occurs when excessive tourism and development creates a genetic drift between animals of the same species. In this case, there was a volcanic eruption in St. Kitts that killed an enormous population of the squirrel population. The explosion led to massive loss of alleles in the genetic pool of St. Kitts rodents. Consequently, Sciuirus apbios evolved differently from Sciuirus vulgaris. The image below best describes the bottleneck effect: †¢ Sciuirus vulgaris has an average gestation period of 29.3 days compared to Sciuirus apbios that have a gestation period of 42.7 days. The difference in the gestation periods of the two species is significant enough to prevent successful reproduction. In conclusion, the emergence of Sciuirus apbios is a result of the divergence of the Sciuirus vulgaris population as a result of allopatric speciation and the bottleneck effect (Wolff & Sherman,