![Darwin's finches](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Darwin%27s_finches.jpeg)
In
evolutionary biology
Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes (natural selection, common descent, speciation) that produced the diversity of life on Earth. It is also defined as the study of the history of life fo ...
, adaptive radiation is a process in which organisms diversify rapidly from an ancestral species into a multitude of new forms, particularly when a change in the environment makes new resources available, alters biotic interactions or opens new
environmental niches.
Starting with a single ancestor, this process results in the
speciation
Speciation is the evolutionary process by which populations evolve to become distinct species. The biologist Orator F. Cook coined the term in 1906 for cladogenesis, the splitting of lineages, as opposed to anagenesis, phyletic evolution within ...
and
phenotypic
In genetics, the phenotype () is the set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism. The term covers the organism's morphology or physical form and structure, its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological proper ...
adaptation of an array of species exhibiting different
morphological and physiological traits. The prototypical example of adaptive radiation is finch speciation on the Galapagos ("
Darwin's finches
Darwin's finches (also known as the Galápagos finches) are a group of about 18 species of passerine birds. They are well known for their remarkable diversity in beak form and function. They are often classified as the subfamily Geospizinae or t ...
"), but examples are known from around the world.
Characteristics
Four features can be used to identify an adaptive radiation:
#A common ancestry of component species: specifically a ''recent'' ancestry. Note that this is not the same as a
monophyly
In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic grou ...
in which ''all'' descendants of a common ancestor are included.
#A phenotype-environment correlation: a ''significant'' association between environments and the morphological and physiological traits used to exploit those environments.
#Trait utility: the performance or
fitness advantages of trait values in their corresponding environments.
#Rapid speciation: presence of one or more ''bursts'' in the emergence of new species around the time that ecological and phenotypic divergence is underway.
Conditions
Adaptive radiations are thought to be triggered by an ecological opportunity
or a new adaptive zone.
Sources of ecological opportunity can be the loss of antagonists (
competitors
Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared: where one's gain is the other's loss (an example of which is a zero-sum game). Competition can arise between entities such as organisms, indivi ...
or
predators
Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill th ...
), the evolution of a key innovation or dispersal to a new environment. Any one of these ecological opportunities has the potential to result in an increase in population size and relaxed
stabilizing (constraining) selection. As
genetic diversity is positively
correlated
In statistics, correlation or dependence is any statistical relationship, whether causal or not, between two random variables or bivariate data. Although in the broadest sense, "correlation" may indicate any type of association, in statistic ...
with population size the expanded population will have more genetic diversity compared to the ancestral population. With reduced stabilizing selection
phenotypic
In genetics, the phenotype () is the set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism. The term covers the organism's morphology or physical form and structure, its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological proper ...
diversity can also increase. In addition, intraspecific competition will increase, promoting divergent selection to use a wider range of resources. This ecological release provides the potential for
ecological speciation
Ecological speciation is a form of speciation arising from reproductive isolation that occurs due to an ecological factor that reduces or eliminates gene flow between two populations of a species. Ecological factors can include changes in the envir ...
and thus adaptive radiation.
Occupying a new environment might take place under the following conditions:
#A new habitat has opened up: a volcano, for example, can create new ground in the middle of the ocean. This is the case in places like
Hawaii
Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...
and the
Galapagos. For aquatic species, the formation of a large new lake habitat could serve the same purpose; the tectonic movement that formed the
East African Rift
The East African Rift (EAR) or East African Rift System (EARS) is an active continental rift zone in East Africa. The EAR began developing around the onset of the Miocene, 22–25 million years ago. In the past it was considered to be part of a ...
, ultimately leading to the creation of the
Rift Valley Lakes
The Rift Valley lakes are a series of lakes in the East African Rift valley that runs through eastern Africa from Ethiopia in the north to Malawi in the south, and includes the African Great Lakes in the south. These include some of the world's ...
, is an example of this. An
extinction event
An extinction event (also known as a mass extinction or biotic crisis) is a widespread and rapid decrease in the biodiversity on Earth. Such an event is identified by a sharp change in the diversity and abundance of multicellular organisms. I ...
could effectively achieve this same result, opening up niches that were previously occupied by species that no longer exist.
#This new habitat is relatively isolated. When a volcano erupts on the mainland and destroys an adjacent forest, it is likely that the terrestrial plant and animal species that used to live in the destroyed region will recolonize without evolving greatly. However, if a newly formed habitat is isolated, the species that colonize it will likely be somewhat random and uncommon arrivals.
#The new habitat has a wide availability of niche space. The rare colonist can only adaptively radiate into as many forms as there are niches.
Relationship between mass-extinctions and mass adaptive radiations
A 2020 study found there to be no direct causal relationship between the proportionally most comparable mass radiations and
extinctions in terms of "co-occurrence of species", substantially challenging the hypothesis of "creative mass extinctions".
Examples
Darwin's finches
Darwin's finches are an often-used textbook example of adaptive radiation. Today represented by approximately 15 species, Darwin's finches are Galapagos endemics famously adapted for a specialized feeding behavior (although one species, the Cocos finch (''
Pinaroloxias inornata''), is not found in the Galapagos but on the
island of Cocos south of
Costa Rica
Costa Rica (, ; ; literally "Rich Coast"), officially the Republic of Costa Rica ( es, República de Costa Rica), is a country in the Central American region of North America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the no ...
).
Darwin's finches are not actually
finch
The true finches are small to medium-sized passerine birds in the family Fringillidae. Finches have stout conical bills adapted for eating seeds and nuts and often have colourful plumage. They occupy a great range of habitats where they are usua ...
es in the true sense, but are members of the tanager family
Thraupidae
The tanagers (singular ) comprise the bird family Thraupidae, in the order Passeriformes. The family has a Neotropical distribution and is the second-largest family of birds. It represents about 4% of all avian species and 12% of the Neotropica ...
, and are derived from a single ancestor that arrived in the Galapagos from mainland South America perhaps just 3 million years ago.
Excluding the Cocos finch, each species of Darwin's finch is generally widely distributed in the Galapagos and fills the same niche on each island. For the ground finches, this niche is a diet of seeds, and they have thick bills to facilitate the consumption of these hard materials.
The ground finches are further specialized to eat seeds of a particular size: the large ground finch (''
Geospiza magnirostris'') is the largest species of Darwin's finch and has the thickest beak for breaking open the toughest seeds, the small ground finch (''
Geospiza fuliginosa'') has a smaller beak for eating smaller seeds, and the medium ground finch (''
Geospiza fortis'') has a beak of intermediate size for optimal consumption of intermediately sized seeds (relative to ''G. magnirostris'' and ''G. fuliginosa'').
There is some overlap: for example, the most robust medium ground finches could have beaks larger than those of the smallest large ground finches.
Because of this overlap, it can be difficult to tell the species apart by eye, though their songs differ.
These three species often occur
sympatrically, and during the rainy season in the Galapagos when food is plentiful, they specialize little and eat the same, easily accessible foods.
It was not well-understood why their beaks were so adapted until
Peter and Rosemary Grant
Peter Raymond Grant (born October 26, 1936) and Barbara Rosemary Grant (born October 8, 1936) are a British married couple who are evolutionary biologists at Princeton University. Each currently holds the position of emeritus professor. The ...
studied their feeding behavior in the long dry season, and discovered that when food is scarce, the ground finches use their specialized beaks to eat the seeds that they are best suited to eat and thus avoid starvation.
The other finches in the Galapagos are similarly uniquely adapted for their particular niche. The cactus finches (''
Geospiza
''Geospiza'' is a genus of bird in the tanager family Thraupidae. All species in the genus are endemic to the Galápagos Islands. Together with related genera, they are collectively known as Darwin's finches. Although in the past, they were class ...
'' sp.) have somewhat longer beaks than the ground finches that serve the dual purpose of allowing them to feed on
Opuntia
''Opuntia'', commonly called prickly pear or pear cactus, is a genus of flowering plants in the cactus family Cactaceae. Prickly pears are also known as ''tuna'' (fruit), ''sabra'', ''nopal'' (paddle, plural ''nopales'') from the Nahuatl word f ...
cactus nectar and pollen while these plants are flowering, but on seeds during the rest of the year.
The warbler-finches (''
Certhidea
The warbler-finches are a genus ''Certhidea'' of birds in the tanager family Thraupidae that are endemic to the Galápagos Islands. Together with related genera, they are collectively known as Darwin's finches.
The two species were formerly cons ...
'' sp.) have short, pointed beaks for eating insects.
The woodpecker finch (''
Camarhynchus pallidus'') has a slender beak which it uses to pick at wood in search of insects; it also uses small sticks to reach insect prey inside the wood, making it one of the few
animals that use tools.
The mechanism by which the finches initially diversified is still an area of active research. One proposition is that the finches were able to have a non-adaptive,
allopatric speciation
Allopatric speciation () – also referred to as geographic speciation, vicariant speciation, or its earlier name the dumbbell model – is a mode of speciation that occurs when biological populations become geographically isolated from ...
event on separate islands in the archipelago, such that when they reconverged on some islands, they were able to maintain
reproductive isolation.
Once they occurred in sympatry, niche specialization was favored so that the different species competed less directly for resources.
This second, sympatric event was adaptive radiation.
Cichlids of the African Great Lakes
The
haplochromine cichlid
Cichlids are fish from the family Cichlidae in the order Cichliformes. Cichlids were traditionally classed in a suborder, the Labroidei, along with the wrasses ( Labridae), in the order Perciformes, but molecular studies have contradicted this ...
fishes in the
Great Lakes
The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five lakes ...
of the
East African Rift
The East African Rift (EAR) or East African Rift System (EARS) is an active continental rift zone in East Africa. The EAR began developing around the onset of the Miocene, 22–25 million years ago. In the past it was considered to be part of a ...
(particularly in
Lake Tanganyika
Lake Tanganyika () is an African Great Lake. It is the second-oldest freshwater lake in the world, the second-largest by volume, and the second-deepest, in all cases after Lake Baikal in Siberia. It is the world's longest freshwater lake. ...
,
Lake Malawi
Lake Malawi, also known as Lake Nyasa in Tanzania and Lago Niassa in Mozambique, is an African Great Lake and the southernmost lake in the East African Rift system, located between Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania.
It is the fifth largest fr ...
, and
Lake Victoria) form the most speciose modern example of adaptive radiation.
These lakes are believed to be home to about 2,000 different species of cichlid, spanning a wide range of ecological roles and morphological characteristics.
Cichlids in these lakes fill nearly all of the roles typically filled by many fish families, including those of predators, scavengers, and herbivores, with varying dentitions and head shapes to match their dietary habits.
In each case, the radiation events are only a few million years old, making the high level of speciation particularly remarkable.
Several factors could be responsible for this diversity: the availability of a multitude of niches probably favored specialization, as few other fish taxa are present in the lakes (meaning that sympatric speciation was the most probable mechanism for initial specialization).
Also, continual changes in the water level of the lakes during the Pleistocene (which often turned the largest lakes into several smaller ones) could have created the conditions for secondary allopatric speciation.
Tanganyika cichlids
Lake Tanganyika
Lake Tanganyika () is an African Great Lake. It is the second-oldest freshwater lake in the world, the second-largest by volume, and the second-deepest, in all cases after Lake Baikal in Siberia. It is the world's longest freshwater lake. ...
is the site from which nearly all the cichlid lineages of East Africa (including both riverine and lake species) originated.
Thus, the species in the lake constitute a single adaptive radiation event but do not form a single
monophyletic
In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gro ...
clade
A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English term, ...
.
Lake Tanganyika is also the least speciose of the three largest African Great Lakes, with only around 200 species of cichlid;
however, these cichlids are more morphologically divergent and ecologically distinct than their counterparts in lakes Malawi and Victoria, an artifact of Lake Tanganyika's older cichlid fauna. Lake Tanganyika itself is believed to have formed 9–12 million years ago, putting a recent cap on the age of the lake's cichlid fauna.
Many of Tanganyika's cichlids live very specialized lifestyles. The giant or emperor cichlid (''
Boulengerochromis microlepis
The giant cichlid (''Boulengerochromis microlepis''), also known as the emperor cichlid, is a species of fish in the family Cichlidae, Endemism, endemic to Lake Tanganyika in Africa.[Cichla temensis
''Cichla temensis'', the speckled pavon, speckled peacock bass, painted pavon, or three-barred peacock bass, is a very large South American cichlid, and a prized food and game fish. Reaching up to in length and in weight, it is the largest cich ...]
'', the speckled peacock bass).
It is thought that giant cichlids spawn only a single time, breeding in their third year and defending their young until they reach a large size, before dying of starvation some time thereafter.
The three species of ''
Altolamprologus
''Altolamprologus'' is a small genus of pseudocrenilabrine cichlids endemic to Lake Tanganyika in eastern Africa. They inhabit areas of the lake with large amounts of rock, most frequently in water two to ten metres in depth. Two formally descri ...
'' are also piscivores, but with laterally compressed bodies and thick scales enabling them to chase prey into thin cracks in rocks without damaging their skin.
''
Plecodus straeleni'' has evolved large, strangely curved teeth that are designed to scrape scales off of the sides of other fish, scales being its main source of food.
''
Gnathochromis permaxillaris
''Gnathochromis permaxillaris'' is a species of African fish in the family Cichlidae. It is endemic to relatively deep waters in Lake Tanganyika in the countries of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, and Zambia. It is wid ...
'' possesses a large mouth with a protruding upper lip, and feeds by opening this mouth downward onto the sandy lake bottom, sucking in small invertebrates.
A number of Tanganyika's cichlids are shell-brooders, meaning that mating pairs lay and fertilize their eggs inside of empty shells on the lake bottom.
''
Lamprologus callipterus
''Lamprologus callipterus'' is a species of cichlid endemic to Lake Tanganyika where it very actively moves about in search of crustaceans and other invertebrates. Males of this species can reach a length of TL while the females only grow to T ...
'' is a unique egg-brooding species, with 15 cm-long males amassing collections of shells and guarding them in the hopes of attracting females (about 6 cm in length) to lay eggs in these shells.
These dominant males must defend their territories from three types of rival: (1) other dominant males looking to steal shells; (2) younger, "sneaker" males looking to fertilize eggs in a dominant male's territory; and (3) tiny, 2–4 cm "parasitic dwarf" males that also attempt to rush in and fertilize eggs in the dominant male's territory.
These parasitic dwarf males never grow to the size of dominant males, and the male offspring of dominant and parasitic dwarf males grow with 100% fidelity into the form of their fathers.
A number of other highly specialized Tanganyika cichlids exist aside from these examples, including those adapted for life in open lake water up to 200m deep.
Malawi cichlids
The cichlids of Lake Malawi constitute a "species flock" of up to 1000 endemic species.
Only seven cichlid species in Lake Malawi are not a part of the species flock: the Eastern happy (''
Astatotilapia calliptera
''Astatotilapia calliptera'', the eastern happy or eastern river bream, is a species of haplochromine cichlid from southeastern Africa.
Description
The male ''Astatotilapia calliptera'' has blue lips and a dark line through its eye. It can show a ...
''), the sungwa (''
Serranochromis robustus''), and five tilapia species (genera ''
Oreochromis
''Oreochromis'' is a large genus of oreochromine cichlids, fishes endemic to Africa and the Middle East. A few species from this genus have been introduced far outside their native range and are important in aquaculture. Many others have very ...
'' and ''
Coptodon
''Coptodon'' is a genus of cichlids native to fresh, brackish and coastal marine waters in Africa with ''C. zillii'' also found in the Middle East. It is the only genus in the tribe Coptodonini. Formerly included in ''Tilapia'', this genus and tr ...
'').
All of the other cichlid species in the lake are descendants of a single original colonist species, which itself was descended from Tanganyikan ancestors.
The common ancestor of Malawi's species flock is believed to have reached the lake 3.4 million years ago at the earliest, making Malawi cichlids' diversification into their present numbers particularly rapid.
Malawi's cichlids span a similarly range of feeding behaviors to those of Tanganyika, but also show signs of a much more recent origin. For example, all members of the Malawi species flock are
mouth-brooders, meaning the female keeps her eggs in her mouth until they hatch; in almost all species, the eggs are also fertilized in the female's mouth, and in a few species, the females continue to guard their fry in their mouth after they hatch.
Males of most species display predominantly blue coloration when mating. However, a number of particularly divergent species are known from Malawi, including the piscivorous ''
Nimbochromis livingtonii'', which lies on its side in the substrate until small cichlids, perhaps drawn to its broken white patterning, come to inspect the predator - at which point they are swiftly eaten.
Victoria cichlids
Lake Victoria's cichlids are also a species flock, once composed of some 500 or more species.
The deliberate introduction of the Nile Perch (''
Lates niloticus'') in the 1950s proved disastrous for Victoria cichlids, and the collective biomass of the Victoria cichlid species flock has decreased substantially and an unknown number of species have become extinct.
However, the original range of morphological and behavioral diversity seen in the lake's cichlid fauna is still mostly present today, if endangered.
These again include cichlids specialized for niches across the trophic spectrum, as in Tanganyika and Malawi, but again, there are standouts. Victoria is famously home to many piscivorous cichlid species, some of which feed by sucking the contents out of mouthbrooding females' mouths.
Victoria's cichlids constitute a far younger radiation than even that of Lake Malawi, with estimates of the age of the flock ranging from 200,000 years to as little as 14,000.
Adaptive radiation in Hawaii
![Iiwi_on_native_mint_-_Hakalau_Forest_NWR](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Iiwi_on_native_mint_-_Hakalau_Forest_NWR.jpg)
Hawaii
Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...
has served as the site of a number of adaptive radiation events, owing to its isolation, recent origin, and large land area. The three most famous examples of these radiations are presented below, though insects like the Hawaiian
drosophilid flies and ''
Hyposmocoma
''Hyposmocoma'' is a genus of moths with more 350 species endemic to the Hawaiian Islands. The genus was first described by Arthur Gardiner Butler in 1881. Most species of ''Hyposmocoma'' have plant-based diets, but four species, such as '' Hypos ...
'' moths have also undergone adaptive radiation.
Hawaiian honeycreepers
The
Hawaiian honeycreeper
Hawaiian honeycreepers are a group of small, passerine birds endemic to Hawaii. They are closely related to the rosefinches in the genus ''Carpodacus'', but many species have evolved features unlike those present in any other finch. Their great ...
s form a large, highly morphologically diverse species group of birds that began radiating in the early days of the Hawaiian archipelago. While today only 17 species are known to persist in Hawaii (3 more may or may not be extinct), there were more than 50 species prior to Polynesian colonization of the archipelago (between 18 and 21 species have gone extinct since the discovery of the islands by westerners). The Hawaiian honeycreepers are known for their beaks, which are specialized to satisfy a wide range of dietary needs: for example, the beak of the ʻakiapōlāʻau (''
Hemignathus wilsoni'') is characterized by a short, sharp lower mandible for scraping bark off of trees, and the much longer, curved upper mandible is used to probe the wood underneath for insects.
Meanwhile, the ʻiʻiwi (''
Drepanis coccinea'') has a very long curved beak for reaching nectar deep in ''
Lobelia
''Lobelia'' () is a genus of flowering plants comprising 415 species, with a subcosmopolitan distribution primarily in tropical to warm temperate regions of the world, a few species extending into cooler temperate regions.Huxley, A., ed. (1992 ...
'' flowers.
An entire clade of Hawaiian honeycreepers, the tribe
Psittirostrini, is composed of thick-billed, mostly seed-eating birds, like the Laysan finch (''
Telespiza cantans'').
In at least some cases, similar morphologies and behaviors appear to have evolved convergently among the Hawaiian honeycreepers; for example, the short, pointed beaks of ''
Loxops
''Loxops'' is a Hawaiian honeycreeper genus in the finch family (biology), family, Fringillidae. Most of them are commonly known as akepa.
Taxonomy
There are 5 species in this genus, two of which are recently extinct or possibly extinct:
* ‘A ...
'' and ''
Oreomystis'' evolved separately despite once forming the justification for lumping the two genera together.
The Hawaiian honeycreepers are believed to have descended from a single common ancestor some 15 to 20 million years ago, though estimates range as low as 3.5 million years.
Hawaiian silverswords
![Young_silverswords,_Haleakala](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Young_silverswords%2C_Haleakala.jpg)
Adaptive radiation is not a strictly vertebrate phenomenon, and examples are also known from among plants. The most famous example of adaptive radiation in plants is quite possibly the Hawaiian
silverswords, named for alpine desert-dwelling ''
Argyroxiphium
''Argyroxiphium'' is a small genus of plants in the family Asteraceae. Its members are known by the common names silversword or greensword due to their long, narrow leaves and the silvery hairs on some species. The silverswords belong to a larger ...
'' species with long, silvery leaves that live for up to 20 years before growing a single flowering stalk and then dying.
The Hawaiian
silversword alliance
The silversword alliance, also known as the tarweeds, refers to an adaptive radiation of around 30 species in the composite or sunflower family, Asteraceae. The group is endemic to Hawaii, and is derived from a single immigrant to the islands. F ...
consists of twenty-eight species of Hawaiian plants which, aside from the namesake silverswords, includes trees, shrubs, vines, cushion plants, and more.
The silversword alliance is believed to have originated in Hawaii no more than 6 million years ago, making this one of Hawaii's youngest adaptive radiation events.
This means that the silverswords evolved on Hawaii's modern high islands, and descended from a single common ancestor that arrived on
Kauai
Kauai, () anglicized as Kauai ( ), is geologically the second-oldest of the main Hawaiian Islands (after Niʻihau). With an area of 562.3 square miles (1,456.4 km2), it is the fourth-largest of these islands and the 21st largest island ...
from western North America.
The closest modern relatives of the silverswords today are California tarweeds of the family
Asteraceae
The family Asteraceae, alternatively Compositae, consists of over 32,000 known species of flowering plants in over 1,900 genera within the order Asterales. Commonly referred to as the aster, daisy, composite, or sunflower family, Compositae w ...
.
Hawaiian lobelioids
Hawaii is also the site of a separate major floral adaptive radiation event: the
Hawaiian lobelioids
The Hawaiian lobelioids are a group of flowering plants in the bellflower family, Campanulaceae, subfamily Lobelioideae, all of which are endemic to the Hawaiian Islands. This is the largest plant radiation in the Hawaiian Islands, and indeed the ...
. The Hawaiian lobelioids are significantly more speciose than the silverswords, perhaps because they have been present in Hawaii for so much longer: they descended from a single common ancestor who arrived in the archipelago up to 15 million years ago.
Today the Hawaiian lobelioids form a clade of over 125 species, including succulents, trees, shrubs, epiphytes, etc. Many species have been lost to extinction and many of the surviving species endangered.
Caribbean anoles
Anole lizards are distributed broadly in the New World, from the Southeastern US to South America. With over 400 species currently recognized, often placed in a single genus (''
Anolis''), they constitute one of the largest radiation events among all lizards.
Anole radiation on the mainland has largely been a process of speciation, and is not adaptive to any great degree, but anoles on each of the
Greater Antilles
The Greater Antilles ( es, Grandes Antillas or Antillas Mayores; french: Grandes Antilles; ht, Gwo Zantiy; jam, Grieta hAntiliiz) is a grouping of the larger islands in the Caribbean Sea, including Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and ...
(
Cuba
Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
,
Hispaniola
Hispaniola (, also ; es, La Española; Latin and french: Hispaniola; ht, Ispayola; tnq, Ayiti or Quisqueya) is an island in the Caribbean that is part of the Greater Antilles. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and th ...
,
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and Unincorporated ...
, and
Jamaica
Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...
) have adaptively radiated in separate, convergent ways.
On each of these islands, anoles have evolved with such a consistent set of morphological adaptations that each species can be assigned to one of six "
ecomorphs": trunk–ground, trunk–crown, grass–bush, crown–giant, twig, and trunk.
Take, for example, crown–giants from each of these islands: the Cuban ''
Anolis luteogularis'', Hispaniola's ''
Anolis ricordii
''Anolis ricordii'', the Haitian giant anole or Haitian green anole, is a species of lizard in the family Dactyloidae. The species is found in Haiti and the Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic ( ; es, República Dominicana, ) is ...
'', Puerto Rico's ''
Anolis cuvieri'', and Jamaica's ''
Anolis garmani
''Anolis garmani'', the Jamaican giant anole, also known as the Jamaican anole or Jamaica giant anole, is a species of anole, a lizard in the family Dactyloidae. The species is endemic to Jamaica, but has been introduced to Florida.
Etymology ...
'' (Cuba and Hispaniola are both home to more than one species of crown–giant).
These anoles are all large, canopy-dwelling species with large heads and large lamellae (scales on the undersides of the fingers and toes that are important for traction in climbing), and yet none of these species are particularly closely related and appear to have evolved these similar traits independently.
The same can be said of the other five ecomorphs across the Caribbean's four largest islands. Much like in the case of the cichlids of the three largest African Great Lakes, each of these islands is home to its own convergent ''Anolis'' adaptive radiation event.
Other examples
Presented above are the most well-documented examples of modern adaptive radiation, but other examples are known. Populations of
three-spined sticklebacks have repeatedly diverged and evolved into distinct ecotypes. On
Madagascar
Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
, birds of the family
Vangidae are marked by very distinct beak shapes to suit their ecological roles.
Madagascan
mantellid frogs have radiated into forms that mirror other tropical frog faunas, with the brightly colored mantellas (''
Mantella
''Mantella'' (also known as golden frogs or Malagasy poison frogs) are a prominent genus of aposematic frogs in the family Mantellidae, endemic to the island of Madagascar. Members of ''Mantella'' are diurnal and terrestrial, with bright aposema ...
'') having evolved convergently with the Neotropical poison dart frogs of
Dendrobatidae
Poison dart frog (also known as dart-poison frog, poison frog or formerly known as poison arrow frog) is the common name of a group of frogs in the Family (biology), family Dendrobatidae which are native to tropical Central and South America. T ...
, while the arboreal ''
Boophis
''Boophis'' is the only genus in the mantellid frog subfamily Boophinae. They are commonly known as bright-eyed or skeleton frogs. They show typical 'tree frog' traits, and are a good example of convergent evolution with morphologically simil ...
'' species are the Madagascan equivalent of
tree frogs and
glass frog
The glass frogs belong to the amphibian family Centrolenidae ( order Anura). While the general background coloration of most glass frogs is primarily lime green, the abdominal skin of some members of this family is transparent and translucent ...
s. The
pseudoxyrhophiine snakes of Madagascar have evolved into fossorial, arboreal, terrestrial, and semi-aquatic forms that converge with the colubroid faunas in the rest of the world. These Madagascan examples are significantly older than most of the other examples presented here: Madagascar's fauna has been evolving in isolation since the island split from India some 88 million years ago, and the Mantellidae originated around 50 mya.
Older examples are known: the
K-Pg extinction event, which caused the disappearance of the dinosaurs and most other reptilian megafauna 65 million years ago, is seen as having triggered a global adaptive radiation event that created the mammal diversity that exists today.
See also
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Cambrian explosion
The Cambrian explosion, Cambrian radiation, Cambrian diversification, or the Biological Big Bang refers to an interval of time approximately in the Cambrian Period when practically all major animal phyla started appearing in the fossil recor ...
—the most notable evolutionary radiation event
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Evolutionary radiation
An evolutionary radiation is an increase in taxonomic diversity that is caused by elevated rates of speciation, that may or may not be associated with an increase in morphological disparity. Radiations may affect one clade or many, and be rapid ...
—a more general term to describe any radiation
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List of adaptive radiated Hawaiian honeycreepers by form
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List of adaptive radiated marsupials by form
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Nonadaptive radiation Nonadaptive radiations are a subset of evolutionary radiations (or species flocks) that are characterized by diversification that is not driven by resource partitioning. The species that are a part of a nonadaptive radiation will tend to have very ...
References
Further reading
* Wilson, E. et al. ''Life on Earth,'' by Wilson, E.; Eisner, T.; Briggs, W.; Dickerson, R.; Metzenberg, R.; O'Brien, R.; Susman, M.; Boggs, W. (Sinauer Associates, Inc., Publishers, Stamford, Connecticut), c 1974. Chapters: ''The Multiplication of Species; Biogeography,'' pp 824–877. 40 Graphs, w species pictures, also Tables, Photos, etc. Includes
Galápagos Islands
The Galápagos Islands (Spanish: , , ) are an archipelago of volcanic islands. They are distributed on each side of the equator in the Pacific Ocean, surrounding the centre of the Western Hemisphere, and are part of the Republic of Ecuador ...
,
Hawaii
Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...
, and
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
subcontinent, (plus
St. Helena
Saint Helena () is a British overseas territory located in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is a remote volcanic tropical island west of the coast of south-western Africa, and east of Rio de Janeiro in South America. It is one of three constit ...
Island, etc.).
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Leakey, Richard. ''The Origin of Humankind''—on adaptive radiation in biology and human evolution, pp. 28–32, 1994, Orion Publishing.
* Grant, P.R. 1999. The ecology and evolution of Darwin's Finches. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
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Mayr, Ernst. 2001. What evolution is. Basic Books, New York, NY.
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* Gavrilets, S. and A. Vose. 2009. ''Dynamic patterns of adaptive radiation: evolution of mating preferences''. In Butlin, R.K., J. Bridle, and D. Schluter (eds) Speciation and Patterns of Diversity, Cambridge University Press, page. 102–126.
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* Pinto, Gabriel, Luke Mahler, Luke J. Harmon, and Jonathan B. Losos. "Testing the Island Effect in Adaptive Radiation: Rates and Patterns of Morphological Diversification in Caribbean and Mainland Anolis Lizards." NCBI (2008): n. pag. Web. 28 Oct. 2014.
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* Schluter, Dolph. The ecology of adaptive radiation. Oxford University Press, 2000.
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Adaptive Radiation
Speciation
Evolutionary biology terminology