New species arise more quickly than previously believed, UMass resear...( if a beach immigrant does breed the ...)

, if a beach immigrant does breed, the resulting hybrid offspring will be less likely to survive, Hendry said, because they're less than ideally suited to either environment. This evidence demonstrates for the first time how rapidly adaptation can lead to reproductive isolation, and it is about 10 times faster than the previously accepted maximum. "This should really make us rethink the importance of natural selection and adaptation to the rapid generation of new species and the generation of biological diversity."

Hendry does offer a word of caution: "Despite our findings of rapid adaptation and reproductive isolation, I don't necessarily presume these two salmon populations will evolve into what would be recognized as separate species. We have simply used new populations to demonstrate the same processes that lead to new species."

Hendry is a Darwin postdoctoral fellow, and conducts research in the biology department's Organismic and Evolutionary Biology program. He conducted his graduate work at the University of Washington in Seattle.

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Contact: Elizabeth Luciano
luciano@journ.umass.edu
413-545-2989
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
18-Oct-2000

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