Parapatric Speciation - Ring Species

Ring Species

Parapatric speciation can occur across a set of neighboring populations in which each can interbreed with closer populations but end populations are too distantly related to interbreed. This population distribution of a species is referred to as a ring species. When an ancestral population extends its range around a geographical barrier and differentiates (despite low-level gene flow), reproductive isolation occurs between terminal populations. This results in technically continuous populations that undergo parapatric speciation; fertility is negatively correlated with distance between populations, and terminal populations between ring species become distinct sister species.

Read more about this topic:  Parapatric Speciation

Famous quotes containing the words ring and/or species:

    Close friends contribute to our personal growth. They also contribute to our personal pleasure, making the music sound sweeter, the wine taste richer, the laughter ring louder because they are there.
    Judith Viorst (20th century)

    The French manner of hunting is gentlemanlike; ours is only for bumpkins and bodies. The poor beasts here are pursued and run down by much greater beasts than themselves; and the true British fox-hunter is most undoubtedly a species appropriated and peculiar to this country, which no other part of the globe produces.
    Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)