speciationintheensatinacomplex-bluevalleyschools（10页）.docVIP

SPECIATION IN THE ENSATINA COMPLEX Name: _____________________________ Background When Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species, he believed that speciation, working through the mechanism of natural selection, was to gradual to be witnessed and could only be inferred from the fossil record, the distribution of similar species, and such. In the 1950’s R.C. Stebbins, at the University of California at Berkeley, completed a study on the salamanders in the genus Ensatina, thought at the time to consist of four species. Salamander’s in the genus Ensatina are plethodontid salamanders that inhabit the terrestrial coniferous forests and oak woodlands from southern British Columbia in Canada, along the coast, to northern Baja, California. Their range extends east to the western slopes of the Cascades, Sierra Nevada, and Peninsular mountain ranges. Stebbins interest in these salamanders arose from observation of patterns existing in separate populations of these salamanders. Stebbins wondered if there were in fact four species, and if a speciation event was being observed in these salamanders. At the time, species had been defined by Ernst Mayr as “groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups”. Difficulties arise when a species has a large range and appears to be segregated into distinct populations based on their location and the visible variations existing between populations. In such situations, the separate populations may be considered “subspecies”, suggesting that they may be on a trajectory leading them to become distinct species. Unlike the binomials given by Carl Linneaus, subspecies names contain three words (i.e. Homo sapiens neanderthal). In the following activity, you will simulate observes of the populations of the Ensatina salamanders that Stebbins made in the 1950’s, analyze his and others data, and make conclusions on speciation in these salamanders. Adapted f