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The types of barriers that can cause this isolation include: different habitats, physical barriers, and a difference in the time of sexual maturity or flowering. [ 6 ] [ 7 ] An example of the ecological or habitat differences that impede the meeting of potential pairs occurs in two fish species of the family Gasterosteidae (sticklebacks).
[3]: 354 [4] [5] Differences in behavior or biology that inhibit formation of hybrid zygotes are termed prezygotic isolation. Reinforcement can be shown to be occurring (or to have occurred in the past) by measuring the strength of prezygotic isolation in a sympatric population in comparison to an allopatric population of the same species.
Isolation by distance is distantly related to speciation. Multiple types of isolating barriers, namely prezygotic isolating barriers, including isolation by distance, are considered the key factor in keeping populations apart, limiting gene flow. [4]
Reinforcement, under his definition, included prezygotic divergence and complete post-zygotic isolation. [18] Servedio and Noor include any detected increase in prezygotic isolation as reinforcement, as long as it is a response to selection against mating between two different species. [4]
Despite being one of the most studied factors in ecological speciation, many aspects are still less understood such as how prevalent the process is in nature [4] as well as the origin of barriers for post-zygotic isolation (as opposed to the much easier detectable pre-zygotic barriers).
Allopatric speciation (from Ancient Greek ἄλλος (állos) 'other' and πατρίς (patrís) 'fatherland') – also referred to as geographic speciation, vicariant speciation, or its earlier name the dumbbell model [1]: 86 – is a mode of speciation that occurs when biological populations become geographically isolated from each other to an extent that prevents or interferes with gene flow.
Support for the reproductive character displacement hypothesis comes from observations of sympatric species in overlapping habitats in nature. Increased prezygotic isolation, which is associated with reproductive character displacement, has been observed in cicadas of genus Magicicada, stickleback fish, and the flowering plants of the genus Phlox.
All three species are separated by intrinsic reproductive barriers [1] Secondary contact is the process in which two allopatrically distributed populations of a species are geographically reunited. This contact allows for the potential for the exchange of genes, dependent on how reproductively isolated the two populations have become.