The primary force that drives sympatric speciation is reproductive isolation. It is more common in plants and generally occurs when polyploid individuals are produced. For instance due to a failure of normal mitotic division offspring having twice the number of chromosomes may be produced. These tetraploid individuals cannot reproduce with diploid individuals and thus can only reproduce amongst themselves: they are reproductively isolated. When they do reproduce the result is the creation of a new...
The primary force that drives sympatric speciation is reproductive isolation. It is more common in plants and generally occurs when polyploid individuals are produced. For instance due to a failure of normal mitotic division offspring having twice the number of chromosomes may be produced. These tetraploid individuals cannot reproduce with diploid individuals and thus can only reproduce amongst themselves: they are reproductively isolated. When they do reproduce the result is the creation of a new species.
In animals the mechanism of sympatric speciation is different. For instance if a group of flies feed on red and green apples. If at first they all feed on the red apples but at some point some of the flies begin to prefer green apples then we get two groups of flies which may have limited interaction with each other. As a result we get genetic variation within each gene pool. As the members of each group continue to mate we get further genetic variation and eventually over time enough variation has occurred that we get a new species.
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