Varying Patterns of Speciation
Wallace’s line, located in the Malay-Archipelago, is one of the best known and most studied boundaries of zoogeography in the world. It is a transition zone between the islands of Borneo and Sulawesi and the islands of Bali and Lombork, which marks both the convergence and division of the diverse flora and fauna found in the Asian (Borneo, The Philippines, and Western Indonesia), and the Australian regions (Sulawesi, Eastern Indonesia, Australia, and New Guinea) (Schulte 2003). The hypothetical line was first proposed by Alfred Russel Wallace in 1858 after observing many morphological differences of various bird species in the Asian and Australian regions (Raven 1935).
In the past, to confirm the placement of Wallace’s hypothetical line, researchers have applied the theories of plate tectonics and continental drift in order to create geographical reconstructions of land masses. From this information, researchers were able to substantiate a majority of the boundaries of the originally drawn line. Presently, however, due to the enigmas found on the island of Sulawesi, a portion of the line between Borneo and Sulawesi (Celebes) still remains uncertain (Whitmore 1981). Researchers have identified two genera that contradict the location of the line: the macaque monkey (Macaca species) and the Sulawesi toad (Bufa celebensis) (Evans et al. 1998). Whereas geographical phenomena such as tectonic plate shifts, rising and falling sea levels, and climatic fluctuations have caused the morphology of the Sulawesi toad to remain fairly undifferentiated, the ancestral macaque monkeys have evolved into seven distinct endemic species.
The zoogeography on the eastern and western sides of Wallace’s line...
... middle of paper ...
...esi. Evolution. 57:6:1436-1443.
Evans, Ben J., Juan Carlos Morales, Jatna Supriatna, and Don J. Melnick. 1998. Origin of the Sulawesi Macaques (Cercopithecidae: Macaca) as Suggested by mitochondrial DNA phylogeny. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. 66:539-560.
Michaux, B. Land Movements and animal distributions in east Wallacea (eastern
Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Melanesia). Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. 112:323-343.
Raven, Henry C. 1935. Wallace’s Line and the Distribution of Indo-Australian Mammals. New York.
Schulte, James A. II. Jane Melville, and Allan Larson. 2003. Molecular phylogenetic
evidence for ancient divergence of lizard taxa on either side of Wallace’s Line. The Royal Society. 270:597-603.
Whitmore, T.C. 1981. Wallace’s Line and Plate Tectonics. Clarendon Press. Oxford
University Press, New York.
Paabo’s team discovered an mtDNA sequence from a finger bone they found from around 40,000 years ago, as carbon dating is one of the most commonly used methods of determining a fossil’s age. (Hammer, 70). Also, Neanderthal mtDNA is differs severely from modern human mtDNA. For example, Microcephalin is a gene for brain size during the development of the organism.
1) Carroll, R. L. 1988. Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution. W. H. Freeman and Company, New York.
of the book. Wollongong: Smith's Hill High School, pp. 10-90. Duffy, M., 2009. "The Species of a Species.
Crickett Sanz, Dave Morgan, & Steve Gulick. "New Insights into Chimpanzees, Tools, and Termites from the Congo Basin." The American Naturalist 164.5 (2004): 56-581. Article. 25 April 2014.
It is said that the humanoid existence begins in Africa. It is no coincidence that Africa is also the home to Chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, and Bonobos, Pan paniscus. These are humans’ two closest living relatives, both sharing almost 99% of the human genome through common descent. While humans were said to have separated from Chimpanzees around 5-7 million years ago , Bonobos separated from its Chimp cousins around 2 million years ago . Bonobos inhabit a single part of Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo South of the Congo River, unlike the Chimpanzee, which inhabits Across West- and Central Africa, with remaining populations distributed over several countries. While these two apes where once thought to be the same species, up until the beginning of the 20th century , there are many differences socially, as well as physically, that make Bonobos more than a Pygmy Chimp. With disparities in morphology, behavior, perhaps even emotions and cognition, and known as the “make love, not war chimp” , how can this ape be so vastly different from its notoriously violent Pan cousin, but yet share the same amount of similar DNA to Homo sapiens? And what does this mean for the studies of human and past humanoid behavior?
Rienzo, Anna Di. Wilson, Allan. 1991. Branching pattern in the evolutionary tree for human mitochondrial DNA. Evolution 88: 1597-1601.
Nicholson KE, Harmon LJ, Losos JB. Evolution of Anolis Lizard Dewlap Diversity. PLOS ONE. 2007
One of the species I chose to center my research paper on is the Tufted Capuchin Monkey. The Tufted Capuchin Monkey’s scientific name is the Cebus Apella Apella, yet they are also known as brown capuchin, black-capped capuchin, or even pin monkey. The Tufted Capuchin is most commonly found east of the Andes from Colombia and Venezuela to Paraguay and Northern Argentina. We find these unendangered monkeys to be living in rain forests, low montane forests, and semi-deciduous lowlands. Also, Capuchin Monkeys are found to have the widest range and broadest habitat tolerances of any other Cebus species.
...nder, C., Tsai, C., Wu, P., Speer, B. R., Rieboldt, S., & Smith, D. (1998/1999/2002). The permian period. Informally published manuscript, Biology 1B project for Section 115, University of California Museum of Paleontology, CA, Retrieved from http://www.ucmp.berkely.edu/permian/permian.php
The Burgess Shale Fauna is a fauna that was constructed based on a group of fossils that were initially found, in the Burgess Shale area in the Canadian Rockies (Gould, 1989). They are a very important group of fossils as “modern multicellular animals make their first unprotected appearance in the fossil record some 570 million years ago” through this group (Gould, 1989, pp. 24). Moreover the Burgess Shales are known to have preserved the soft parts of animals enabling us to get a better understanding of life at the time.
Chapter two consists of Darwin continuing his studies. He talks about variation in the natural world compared to the domesticated species. He defines species variation and says that every naturalist has a different idea of the definition. He explains to the reader that linking other species together by characteristics of variation is challenging because some are so similar but vary in other ways. Environmental conditions could be effecting the variation. Climate, temperature, the separation of the animals could transform them. The species changes over time and have chi...
There are two distinct infraorders of Anthropoidea that have been evolving independent of each other for at least 30,000,000 years. They are the Platyrrhini (New World monkeys) and the Catarrhini (Old World monkeys, apes, and humans). These two diverse groups of species can be distinguished from each other most easily based on the form of their noses and by the number of specific types
Nachman, M W., W M. Brown, M Stoneking, and C F. Aquadro. "Nonneutral Mitochondrial DNA Variation in Humans and Chimpanzees." NCBI PubMed (1996). 30 Mar. 2008 .
More than 90 percent of primate species live in African, Asian, and Neotropic rain forests. Any outside force that alters the size and structure of these forests will directly affect primate populations. The major players that cause habitat...
1. Stanford, Craig. Allen, John S. Anton, Susan C. Exploring Biological Anthropology second edition. Pearson Education, Inc. 2008. Pages 238-420.