Question

A small type of wasp is attracted to a particular plant due to the bright orange color of its flowers. These wasps pollinate the flowers and mate also inside those flowers. There is a mutant version of the plant that is purple in color and becomes more common over time. There a variant of these wasps that prefers the purple flowers over the orange flowers. After several years, these two wasps populations diverge from each other to the point that they cannot interbreed anymore.

What kind of speciation has occurred in these wasps?

Answer 1

The wasp populations' divergence due to preference for different flower colors, resulting in speciation while sharing the same habitat, is an example of sympatric speciation.

Step-by-step explanation:

The scenario described involves wasp populations that were drawn to different colors of a plant's flowers, leading over time to the two populations no longer being able to interbreed. This is a classic example of sympatric speciation, which occurs when new species evolve from a single ancestral species while inhabiting the same geographic region.

In this case, the speciation is driven by sexual selection and habitat differentiation, where the two populations of wasps develop preferences for different flower colors, causing them to mate exclusively within their color preference group. This reproductive isolation eventually leads to genetic divergence sufficient to prevent interbreeding, completing the speciation process.