How does evolution cause a species to split into multiple species?

Question

aaaaaand.....What's the singular and plural form of species?

Answer 1

They dont thats why with all the millions of fossils found none are ever in an in between state. Find me a fossil in a state like that and Ill be a non believer til the day I die. But I already know that you wont because that is not the way it happened. Peace out...........

Answer 2

Evolution doesn't CAUSE the split. Environment or social pressure does.

Say you have an island with a species of lizard on it. The island straddles a fault line, and over time, the island splits because of the movement of the fault. The once united population is now split.

Say that one stays relatively put climatologically. This means the lizards on it aren't gonna change much. The other one, however, starts to drift north.

Metabolism, reptilian or mammalian, produces SOME amount of heat. Reptilian metabolism just doesn't produce enough to be self-heating. But since this moving half of the island is going north, heat will start being a valuable thing. The hypothalamus regulates metabolism, so there will be pressure from the increasing cold for larger and more complex hypothalamii. As the hypothallami get larger and more complex, they will slowly be more and more able to maintain the various types of metabolism that generate more heat. Over millions of years, you'll end up with a warm blooded lizard.

Since it's warm blooded, it's no longer a reptile. This makes it of a different type.

Answer 3

Species is both singular and plural.

Separation of species can occur in several different ways, and the mechanisms are not at present fully understood.

The most easily understood is geographical distance. A wandering population can evolve is such ways to accommodate a new environment such that they would be unable to mate with the offspring of the population they left behind in their original location.

Also, a population can mutate to take advantage of a particular food source, and only those offspring carrying that mutation eventually can mate with one another.

For further discussions of possible evolutionary advantages and species differentiation, go to http://www.talkorigins.org .

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EDIT:
By the way, this is the reason why evolution is a fact while evolutionary theory remains a theory. The fact of speciation over time is unquestionable in the tracing of fossils, DNA, mitochondria, etc. The mechanisms of evolution are not fully understood because the time frames involved are so massively long. The creation of new species of fruitflies has been carried out in the laboratory, but they take about 2 days to reproduce. Critters that take longer to create a new generation are harder to study.

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Answer 4

You already know this. The very definition of evolution is "small changes in a living species over time". Eventually those changes accumulate and new species are the result. Go study Darwin's finches on the Gallapagose Islands in "The Origin of Species". That will explain the details very in depth for you.

And the only form of the word is species.

Answer 5

Here is an example suppose you look at Ring Species such as Ensatina Salamanders where you have three groups A, B, C in which A can breed with B, B can breed with C but A cannot breed with C. Currently because they can all interbreed with B they form a common species. If you wipe out group B you are left with separate species A , and C.

Answer 6

Environmental pressures act differently on animals of the same species that exist in different habitats and each develop the unique characteristics that enhance their chances of survival and through time their adaptations might make them diverge into distinct species. The singular and plural form of species is species.

Answer 7

singular species

plural species

In the binomial Taraxacum Officinale L.

Officinale is the specific epithet


often the food source changes or a geographical or physical barrier occurs, then the individuals gradually change to suit the environment or they die

when a group divides enough that the members can no longer mate and produce fertile offspring, then there are two species instead of one

Answer 8

Simple... Two groups of a species find themselves in different environments, for example bears (or ancestors of bears) lived in wooded areas and others in a northern climate.

One area favored some traits (e.g. brown fur in the woods) and the other area favored different traits (e.g. white fur in the snow). Individuals having the desired traits survived more often, and even tended to migrate to areas where their attributes helped the most (i.e. white bears moved further and further north).

Fast forward some hundreds of thousands of years and you have two different species.

EDIT: I always get a laugh when the supposed lack of "transitional fossils" are found... Newsflash: all species are transitional! We are somewhere in between what we were millions of years ago and what we will be millions of years in the future.

Answer 9

Evolution is random successful adaptations help the creature survive, and therefore reproduce. And visa versa. However sometimes there are two different positive adaptations, which splits the species.

Answer 10

The idea is that the same species living under different conditions should, over time adapt to suit their surroundings - so different surroundings, different species - eventually.

I think it is the same, plural or otherwise. Like sheep.