A study involving Simon Fraser University researchers and
published today in the journal Science has found evidence for the genomic basis
of how new species evolve in adapting to different environments.
Researchers studying an insect known as the walking stick
(genus Timema) determined that the process of “speciation” happened in
association with the use of different host plants. They also determined that
across many populations of the insect, those on one host plant are diverging,
genetically, from the populations on another host plant, a process they call
“parallel speciation.”