Study: Natural Selection Speeds Speciation

A Canadian scientist says he has developed evidence that supports Charles Darwin’s theory that the natural selection process speeds up speciation.

University of British Columbia post doctoral fellow Patrik Nosil says his is the first experiment of its kind conducted in nature that suggests the validity of one of Darwin’s cornerstone ideas — that adaptation to the environment accelerates the creation of new species.

A single adaptive trait such as color could move a population toward the process of forming a new species but adaptation in many traits may be required to actually complete the formation of an entirely new species, said Nosil. The more ways a population can adapt to its unique surroundings, the more likely it will ultimately diverge into a separate species.

The research appears in the online journal PLoS One.