Laboratory experiments of speciation have been conducted for all four modes of

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 ...

allopatric 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 ...

, peripatric,

parapatric In parapatric speciation, two subpopulations of a species evolve reproductive isolation from one another while continuing to exchange genes. This mode of speciation has three distinguishing characteristics: 1) mating occurs non-randomly, 2) gene ...

, and

sympatric In biology, two related species or populations are considered sympatric when they exist in the same geographic area and thus frequently encounter one another. An initially interbreeding population that splits into two or more distinct species sh ...

; and various other processes involving speciation: hybridization,

reinforcement In behavioral psychology, reinforcement is a consequence applied that will strengthen an organism's future behavior whenever that behavior is preceded by a specific antecedent stimulus. This strengthening effect may be measured as a higher freq ...

founder effect In population genetics, the founder effect is the loss of genetic variation that occurs when a new population is established by a very small number of individuals from a larger population. It was first fully outlined by Ernst Mayr in 1942, using ...

s, among others. Most of the

experiments An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when ...

have been done on flies, in particular ''

Drosophila ''Drosophila'' () is a genus of flies, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "small fruit flies" or (less frequently) pomace flies, vinegar flies, or wine flies, a reference to the characteristic of many species ...

'' fruit flies. However, more recent studies have tested yeasts, fungi, and even viruses. It has been suggested that laboratory experiments are not conducive to vicariant speciation events (allopatric and peripatric) due to their small population sizes and limited generations. Most estimates from studies of nature indicate that speciation takes hundreds of thousands to millions of years. On the other hand, many species are thought to have speciated faster and more recently, such as the European flounders ('' Platichthys flesus'') that

spawn Spawn or spawning may refer to: * Spawn (biology), the eggs and sperm of aquatic animals Arts, entertainment, and media * Spawn (character), a fictional character in the comic series of the same name and in the associated franchise ** '' Spawn: ...

pelagic The pelagic zone consists of the water column of the open ocean, and can be further divided into regions by depth (as illustrated on the right). The word ''pelagic'' is derived . The pelagic zone can be thought of as an imaginary cylinder or wa ...

and demersal zones—having allopatrically speciated in under 3000 generations.

Table of experiments

Six publications have attempted to compile, review, and analyze the experimental research on speciation: # John Ringo, David Wood, Robert Rockwell, and Harold Dowse in 1985; #

William R. Rice William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Eng ...

and

Ellen E. Hostert Ellen is a female given name, a diminutive of Elizabeth, Eleanor, Elena and Helen. Ellen was the 609th most popular name in the U.S. and the 17th in Sweden in 2004. People named Ellen include: *Ellen Adarna (born 1988), Filipino actress *Ellen A ...

in 1993; # Ann-Britt Florin and

Anders Ödeen Anders is a male name in Scandinavian languages and Fering North Frisian, an equivalent of the Greek Andreas ("manly") and the English Andrew. It originated from Andres via metathesis. In Sweden, Anders has been one of the most common names fo ...

in 2002; #

Mark Kirkpatrick Mark A. Kirkpatrick is a theoretical population geneticist and evolutionary biologist. He currently holds the T. S. Painter Centennial Professorship in Genetics in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Texas at Austin. His re ...

and Virginie Ravigné in 2002; # Jerry A. Coyne and

H. Allen Orr H. Allen Orr (born 1960) is the Shirley Cox Kearns Professor of Biology at the University of Rochester. Education and career Orr earned his bachelor's degree in Biology and Philosophy from the College of William and Mary and his Ph.D. in Biology ...

in 2004; and # James D. Fry in 2009.Fry, James D. (2009). Laboratory Experiments on Speciation. In Garland, Theodore & Rose, Michael R. "Experimental Evolution: Concepts, Methods, and Applications of Selection Experiments". Pp. 631–656. The table summarizes the studies and data reviewed in these publications. It also references several contemporary experiments and is non-exhaustive. In the table, multiple numbers separated by semi-colons in the generations column indicate that multiple experiments were conducted. The replications (in parentheses) indicates the number of populations used in the experiments—i.e. how many times the experiment was replicated. Various types of selection have been imposed on experimental populations and are indicated by the selection type column. Negative or positive results of each experiment are provided by the reproductive isolation column. Pre-zygotic reproductive isolation means that the reproducing individuals in the populations were unable to produce offspring (effectively a positive result). Post-zygotic isolation means that the reproducing individuals were able to produce offspring but they were either sterile or inviable (a positive result as well). Negative results are indicated by "none"—that is, the experiments did not result in reproductive isolation.

References

{{evolution, show=no

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 ...

Experiments An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when ...

Table of experiments

See also

References