Final answer:
Habitat Isolation is a prezygotic barrier that causes reproductive isolation by preventing organisms with different breeding schedules from interbreeding, such as two frog species with overlapping but distinct breeding periods. This temporal isolation, along with other prezygotic mechanisms like gametic barriers and mechanical barriers, ensures species remain separate.
Step-by-step explanation:
Habitat Isolation is a type of prezygotic barrier that plays a critical role in reproductive isolation among species. Prezygotic barriers are mechanisms that prevent reproduction from occurring by obstructing fertilization when organisms attempt to reproduce. Specifically, habitat isolation occurs when two species live in the same area but have different breeding schedules, which prevents them from mating. For instance, if one species of frog reproduces from January to March, and another closely related species reproduces from March to May, they will not interbreed due to the differences in their reproductive timing, known as temporal isolation.
Other prezygotic barriers include gametic barriers, where differences in gametes (egg and sperm) prevent fertilization, and mechanical barriers, where reproductive structures of different species do not fit together. These barriers, along with postzygotic barriers that occur after zygote formation, act as mechanisms to maintain species separation and prevent gene flow, thereby promoting speciation.