From: Theory Of Intelligent Design

Speciation

Speciation is a process where a population so much changes from the population they once were that they have gone their separate ways. Where still able to have offspring the entire population no longer chooses to pair-up together. Or a population that became isolated from another can experience genetic drift that forces them forever apart.

In some cases speciation happens very slowly by taking small learning steps, one gene or epigentic switching change at a time. There is here no single genome change was an event that created a new species.

How long it would take an isolated genome to slowly speciate depends on its learning rate (how fast it gains or changes new information/genes). Sexual reproduction has a good amount of crossover exchange which greatly accelerates the ability to adapt and change. Asexual reproducers such as E. coli produce clones of itself which are identical to the parent. Fast responses to environment is then from exchanging plasmids. But these are separate transient genomes not the genome that accomplishes reproduction.

There are "living fossils" that have changed so little it seems to us that they should have become a new species by now or at least new morphology. But this change is relative to how fast our genome changes in comparison to theirs. So it is not time alone that matters, we must also consider the genome learning rate in our consideration of how long it takes for a given genome to speciate.

In other cases such as a chromosome fusion event speciation can quickly follow this immediate change in genome structure having spread into the population. This happened in humans, fruit flies (drosophilia) and mosquitoes following a chromosome speciation[17] event from an ancestor much like us (modern great-apes did not exist back then).


Behavioral Speciation (slow)

Speciation is in part guided by what the organism itself finds desirable in the variety available to select as a mate. This includes extreme examples such as peacocks where females selecting the largest most attractive tail design has led to males with giant brilliant displays, even though this makes it more difficult to fly from predators.

In humans the looks of "sex symbols" are sometimes computer enhanced to represent the conscious ideals not yet common in our morphology. What gets added to or removed, helps show what human intelligence finds most desireable.

In a behavioral speciation there is no one day and time that a pivotal event occurred. And the genome must first have to be already drifting in that direction or else such morphological change is not possible. In the peacock example we can say that the peacocks are aroused by the direction their genome is already set to go anyway. Therefore what they in their mind find desirable is the same as what the genome finds desirable at the molecular level being expressed in the emergent peacock brain. What they find desirable is not here hard-wired into neurons it is an expression of the molecular genome itself that even responds chemically with hormones that increase to cause physiological change that in humans with just a picture of a member of same species inviting mating.

We can to some degree predict where a species is drifting towards, by how it idealizes itself. For our species there is all of art and culture where we find exaggerations of real life where the size of Betty Boops pupil alone is the size of her whole mouth yet we still recognize it as being human and sexy. What produces this may be that it is epigenetically possible to drift in that direction, or already are.


Chromosome Speciation (fast - Human, Fruit Fly, Mosquito)

One giant chromosome may have advantage over two average sized ones, which would help explain why that sometimes happens with beneficial results. It first of all produces very large chromosomes from the shorter connecting together. And this would be another way the genome takes a good guess what might work. It already has two functional genes and put together something bigger, maybe better.

The telomeres may encourage a beneficial chromosome fusion by their having safely tangled protective ends, a mechanism to increase chromosome complexity. After occurring it can be enough to guarantee a very major speciation event.

In in this way, human speciation chromosome complexity increased when two chromosomes fuse at opposite ends to become one very large one. Even though there was not a significant amount of gene scrambling where ends tangled the rearranging of the chromosome territories may have already produced a noticeable morphological change. Morphology based fossil evidence dates human speciation to roughly 6 million years ago, which is in the range of estimates for the chromosome fusion.

When detailed in a cladogram there are two branching events.

First, the fusion in one parent's gamete (haploid sex cell) to produce 47 chromosome offspring with the fusion. That was next replicated in the population. The mother of a 47 might have known there was something about them that was not like all the other children but is expected they will love them just the same.

Second, the 47's paired up to occasionally produce an offspring with the fusion in both of the parents gamete they recieved which gave them the first 46 chromosome genome structure, were human. The 47 chromosome parents may have also been able to tell that their 46 offspring were somehow different from their 48 and 47 chromosome peers.

Chromosomal fusion has made humans unique among their kind where such a fusion makes a total of 46 chromosomes, instead of the 48 of all great apes. Here, a parent passed to offspring a fused copy in one of the two parental gametes, to birth a being with 47 chromosomes. That fusion then passed into the population where the fusion would then on occasion have the fusion in both gametes to make the first 46 chromosome human beings where from such man and woman (Chromosomal Adam and Eve) could only be born 46 chromosome descendants, us.


Hybridization Speciation (immediate)

Common in plants and used in agriculture a hybrid species is created when two or more still reproductively viable species combine to form a new non-sterile species. In plants this is relatively easy. In animals can be more difficult. Horses and donkeys normally give birth to a sterile mule but on rare occasions a fertile mule is born.


Polyploid Speciation (immediate)

Polyploid speciation is the result of all chromosomes doubling, tripling or more in number. With twice or more of everything the cells are proportionately larger, resulting in a larger plant or animal. This is relatively common in self-reproducing plants. In animals reproducing the new genome structure requires a genome compatible mate, therefore surviving polyploidy species are less frequent but are still found in some insects, fishes, amphibians, reptiles and rat.[18]

Paleopolyploidy is the scientific study of prehistoric polyploid speciation events.