Talk:Adaptive radiation

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Diversity
This article should probably put more emphasis on the idea that adaptive radiation is one of the leading causes of biological diversity. Through adaptive radiation, speciation occurs which creates a variety of new species with a variety of new traits. Even within a single population, adaptive radiation can cause that population to diversify genetically and morphologically. Diversity is one of the major observable results of adaptive radiation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Behrens.42 (talk • contribs) 06:04, 1 October 2014 (UTC) --Behrens.42 (talk) 18:23, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Adaptive radiation is never an intra-species phenomenon. If you want to describe genetic diversity within a population, you can talk about divergent selection, or multiple niche polymorphisms, etc. But you wouldn't use the term "adaptive radiation" until speciation happens Jesseseeem (talk) 23:06, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Darwin's Finches
This page could also benefit from a strong example such as Darwin's finches. They probably best exemplify the process of adaptive radiation. As Darwin's finches were separated among the islands of the Galapagos, they evolved due to the differing environments they inhabited. One major change due to the divergence of the species involved their beak shape which changed according to the method used to obtain food — Preceding unsigned comment added by Behrens.42 (talk • contribs) 05:04, 1 October 2014 (UTC) --Behrens.42 (talk) 18:24, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Empirical Methods Used to Study Adaptive Radiation
This page could benefit from a discussion of how adaptive radiation has been studied in the past. There are four main approaches which include fossils, phylogenetic comparative methods, microevolutionary studies of extant taxa, and adaptive radiation in the lab. Fossils allow us to study the changes in the clade of an extinct species. Phylogenetic comparative methods study the increasingly complete sets of phylogenies that have been developing over the past few decades. Microevolutionary studies of extant taxa looks into the specific traits and processes of a taxa to determine whether any of these factors could affect adaptive radiation. And finally adaptive radiation in the lab allows for experimental flexibility and makes it easier to control certain factors when studying adaptive radiation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Behrens.42 (talk • contribs) 04:58, 1 October 2014 (UTC) --Behrens.42 (talk) 18:24, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Question
How does adaptive radiation differ from allopatric speciation? Allopatry begins when subpopulations of a species become isolated geographically (for example, by habitat fragmentation or migration). The isolated populations are then liable to diverge evolutionarily over many generations. RK 16:07, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC)


 * Allopatry implies genetic isolation first, then divergence. Adaptive radiation, as I understand it, implies divergence by niche-separation. Lake Victoria is a common example - one species of fish diverges into many without first having genetic isolation simply because genetic variation partitions the population into various ecological niches where they need not compete or even interbreed. Graft 16:54, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This is a cool question. Ecological speciation can be allopatric, sympatric, or anything in between. If there is a lot of ecological speciation happening (such that it outpaces extinction), you'll get an adaptive radiation. You can also get an adaptive radiation from nonecological speciation (often in allopatry) if the species undergo secondary geographic range overlap, and character displacement (see figure 3 in ) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jesseseeem (talk • contribs) 23:10, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Allopatric speciation
I quite agree that this article seems like it's talking about allopatric speciation except it also occasionally throws the word niche and describes the evolution as relatively rapid. Other than the first few sentances, I don't think this description is true to the real definition of adaptive radiation into different ecological niches. I think it's impossible to do so without a breif explanation of ecological niches within the article.

Drosophila
I changed the "Drosophila_affinidisjuncta" link to "Hawaiian Drosophilidae". It doesn't exist yet but sooner or later I'll get around to writing it. As it was it wasn't very useful. KarlM 06:35, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Mammalian evolution
I find the statement that monotremes and marsupials evolved from placental mammals very surprising. Is this right?

Placentals
Just a note that Australia has indigenous rodent and bat species, so the mention of marsupials and monotremes being the only mammals present before human habitation is false.

Agreed, there were plenty of bats, rodents, dingos etc etc etc, so i deleted that line. --Hypo Mix 02:50, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Evolutionary radiation
Hi, how is this different from evolutionary radiation? Should the articles be merged? --Kjoonlee 07:40, 9 October 2006 (UTC)


 * This matter has been discussed at talk page for evolutionary radiation. +A.Ou 21:54, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Cladogenesis
Should cladogenesis and adaptive radiation be merged?

This site about |Miocene grazing horses talks briefly about adaptive radiation and cladogenesis, but I think it perverses the meanings in doing so. Then again, the original author of the cladogenesis article may have a twisted definition of cladogenesis in the first place....

Oxford dictionary says cladogenesis divides one species into two, while adaptive radiation does not restrain the number of divisions from one species. Just wanted your input (and then maybe I could move my Hawaiian archipelago addition in the cladogenesis article to the adaptive radiation article instead). Hkim43 04:22, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Bipedal example
I removed a recently added paragraph using "bipedal species...homo sapiens"" as an example. It doesn't seem immediately obvious that this illustrates the concept as described in the article - "rapid speciation...filling many ecological niches". - David Oberst 19:12, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Can someone fix the illustration?
If you read the order below carefully and look at the drawing, it doesn't add up, around steps 3-6.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.143.137.7 (talk) 00:56, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

A merge that wasn't
For those who might be confused by my recent edits: see Talk:Evolutionary radiation. RockMagnetist (talk) 19:50, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Hawaiian honeycreepers example
Darwin's finches are a model species when studying avian island radiation, but the Hawaiian honeycreepers are an impressive example as well. It would be interesting to add a section about the rapid honeycreeper radiation throughout the Hawaiian islands. It is a well studied radiation with numerous different approaches in comparing phylogeny and determining how diverse the population became through adaptive radiation. Bennett.896 (talk) 20:25, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Phylogenetic tree
It would be beneficial for readers to see a phylogenetic tree of a population that underwent adaptive radiation. Readers would be able to visualize how much diversity can emerge from a single ancestor. Bennett.896 (talk) 20:36, 1 October 2014 (UTC)