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Evolutionary biology

Speciation undone

Nature volume 507, pages 178–179 (2014)Cite this article

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Hybridization can cause two species to fuse into a single population. New observations suggest that two species of Darwin's finches are hybridizing on a Galapagos island, and that a third one has disappeared through interbreeding.

The process of speciation, in which one species splits into two, is vulnerable to collapse in its early stages through interbreeding and the exchange of genes, a process referred to as introgression. As explained by the evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky1, “Introgressive hybridization may, then, be a passing stage in the process of species formation. On the other hand, the adaptive value of hybrids may be as high as that of their parent; introgressive hybridization may lead to obliteration of the differences between the incipient species and their fusion into a single variable one, thus undoing the result of the previous divergent development.” Writing in American Naturalist, Kleindorfer et al.2 offer a possible example of this process, in a study suggesting that one population of Darwin's finches has become extinct through interbreeding with another.

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Figure 1: Invasion, evolution and loss.

A–C: P. R. Grant & B. R. Grant

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Peter R. Grant and B. Rosemary Grant are in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08540, USA.,

    Peter R. Grant & B. Rosemary Grant

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  1. Peter R. Grant
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  2. B. Rosemary Grant
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Correspondence to Peter R. Grant or B. Rosemary Grant.

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Grant, P., Grant, B. Speciation undone. Nature 507, 178–179 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/507178b

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