Question

Explain one model for how sympatric speciation can occur in a sexually reproducing population, assuming that different phenotypes have access to different and unevenly distributed resources.

Answer 1

Sympatric speciation is the evolutionary process bu which new species evolve from the ancestral one by inhabiting the same geeographic region. Sympatric speciation allows new species to evolve from a common ancestor, while the new and old species are still living in the same geographic region.For example sympatric speciation has been shown to have occurred in apple maggot flies (Rhagoletis pomonella), a parasitic insect that laid its eggs in the fruit of wild hawthorns (Crataegus) until one subset of the population began to lay its eggs in the fruit of domesticated apple trees (Malus domestica) that grew in the same area. That small group of apple maggot flies selected a different host species from the rest of its kind, and its offspring became accustomed to domesticated apples and later laid their own eggs in them, thereby cementing the shift in host.Sympatric speciation occurs if interactions are so limited between these groups that mating no longer occurs between them. Each new population of flies will have genetic variation in its gene pool, which is the collective genetic information for the group. As they continue to mate with other members of their new group, these variations will become more prevalent in the population. Over a long enough period of time, an entirely new species might develop.So a species who develops through sympatdic speciation many factors play role in its evolution these include nich shift, reproductive isolation some times character displacement etc