Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
t. e. In evolutionary biology, 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. [1][2] Starting with a single ancestor, this ...
Anole lizards, with populations on isolated islands, are one of the best examples of both adaptive radiation and convergent evolution. Anoles on a given island evolve into multiple body types and ecological preferences, and the same set of body types appears in unrelated species across distant islands. [91]
Divergent evolution or divergent selection is the accumulation of differences between closely related populations within a species, sometimes leading to speciation. Divergent evolution is typically exhibited when two populations become separated by a geographic barrier (such as in allopatric or peripatric speciation) and experience different ...
A human molar with four cusps. A key innovation may allow a species to invade a new region or niche and thus be freed from competition, allowing subsequent speciation and radiation. A classic example of this is the fourth cusp of mammalian molars, the hypocone, which allowed early mammalian ancestors to effectively digest their generalised diet ...
For example, there are well over 350,000 described species of beetles. [216] Examples of speciation come from the observations of island biogeography and the process of adaptive radiation, both explained previously. Evidence of common descent can also be found through paleontological studies of speciation within geologic strata.
Radiation is the evolutionary process of diversification of a single species into multiple forms. It includes the physiological and ecological diversity within a rapidly multiplying lineage. [ 8 ] There are many types of radiation including adaptive, concordant, and discordant radiation however escape and radiate coevolution does not always ...
This is a list of adaptive radiated marsupials by form; they are adaptively radiated marsupial species equivalent to the many niche-types of non-marsupial mammals. Many of the surviving species are from Australia. There are unique types, for example the extinct genus Nototherium, a ' rhinoceros -type'. [1]
The evolution of crown orders such modern primates, rodents, and carnivores appears to be part of an adaptive radiation [26] that took place as mammals quickly evolved to take advantage of ecological niches that were left open when most dinosaurs and other animals disappeared following the Chicxulub asteroid impact.