speciation

Mario Livio著　"Brilliant Blunders" を読み始めました。副題は 'From Darwin to Einstein--Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changen Our Uderstanding of Life and the Universe' となっています。 最初に 'The Origin' の章から引用します。

Many of these species become extinct, just like the dead and broken branches of a tree. However, since at each splitting the number of offspring species from a given ancestor doubles, the number of different species can increase dramatically. When does speciation actually occur? According to modern thinking, mainly when a group of members of a particular species become geographically separated. For instance, one group may wander to the rainy side of a mountain range, while the rest of the species stays on the dry slope.

今日はここに出てきた　"speciation" を覚えたいと思います。

・Oxford English Dictionary: The formation of new and distinct species in the course of evolution.: ‘Many of us think of evolution as speciation, but populations of insects evolved resistance without budding into new species.’

・Collins Dictionary: the evolutionary development of a biological species, as by geographical isolation of a group of individuals from the main stock

・Vocabulary.com: Speciation is the process, through evolution, that produces a new species of animal.
Reproduction creates new offspring of a species, but speciation is even more creative: it results in a species that never existed before. Biologists study speciation, often through looking at fossils and other evidence, to see exactly when and where a new species developed. Speciation is a major part of evolution, which is one theory about how life grows, develops, and changes throughout time.


"speciation" の基は "species" ですね。