1/26/2021 Cospeciation
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EVOLUTION 101 en Español print Speciation
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Introduction < previous | next >
Patterns Cospeciation
Mechanisms
If the association between two species is very close, they may speciate in parallel. This
Microevolution
is called cospeciation. It is especially likely to happen between parasites and their
Speciation hosts.
Defining a species
To see how it works, imagine a species of louse living on a species of gopher. When the
Defining gophers get together to mate, the lice get an opportunity to switch gophers and
speciation perhaps mate with lice on another gopher. Gopher-switching allows genes to flow
Causes of through the louse species.
speciation
Reproductive
isolation
Evidence for
speciation
Cospeciation
Consider what happens to the lice if the gopher lineage splits into lineages A and B:
Macroevolution
The big issues
1. Lice have few opportunities for gopher-switching, and lice on gopher lineage A
don't mate with lice living on gopher lineage B.
2. This "geographic" isolation of the louse lineages may cause them to become
reproductively isolated as well, and hence, separate species.
Evolutionary biologists can often tell when lineages have cospeciated because the
parasite phylogeny will "mirror" the host phylogeny.
Observing parallel host and parasite phylogenies is
evidence of cospeciation. Download the graphics on this
page from the Image library.
This example is somewhat idealized — rarely do scientists find hosts and parasites with
exactly matching phylogenies. However, sometimes the phylogenies indicate that
cospeciation did happen along with some host-switching.
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Evidence for Macroevolution
speciation
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