Date published: 2006/06/18
The BBC says:
Two butterfly species have been bred in the lab to make a third distinct species, the journal Nature reports.
In a species, individuals need to be capable of interbreeding to produce fertile offspring.
The study demonstrates that two animal species can evolve to form one, instead of the more common scenario where one species diverges to form two.
...
Hybrid speciation is thought to be rare or absent in animals where, it has been argued, hybrid offspring would be less likely to survive and breed than the parent species.This is because genes from different species are sometimes "incompatible".
A well known example is the mule - a sterile hybrid between the donkey and the horse. It is useful for carrying heavy loads but is a reproductive dead-end.
A team of researchers from Panama, Colombia and the UK managed to recreate Heliconius heurippa in the laboratory by crossing two other species of butterfly; Heliconius cydno and Heliconius melpomene.
...
The wing patterns of H. heurippa individuals make them undesirable as mates for members of their parent species, but attractive to each other - reinforcing patterns of mating that lead to a new species.
Interesting, and the last paragraph provides a plausible explanation of how this kind of speciation can occur.
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