Question

Beetle pollinators of a particular plant are attracted to its flowers' bright orange color. The beetles not only pollinate the flowers, but they mate while inside of the flowers. A mutant version of the plant with red flowers becomes more common with the passage of time. A particular variant of the beetle prefers the red flowers to the orange flowers. Over time, these two beetle variants diverge from each other to such an extent that interbreeding is no longer possible. What kind of speciation has occurred in these beetles, and what has driven it? (2 pts)

Answer 1

Answer:

sympatric speciation and habitat differentiation

Explanation:

Sympatric speciation is a process that produces new species that evolved from a single ancestral species while both continue inhabiting the same geographical area. Therefore, sympatric species have distribution ranges that overlap each other. Habitat differentiation can be defined as the mechanism by which sympatric speciation events produced by mutations in a given population enable the new species to exploit different conditions (i.e., habitats) within the same environment. In biogeography, habitat differentiation is fundamental because this process increases the number of species that coexist in the same geographic area.