vicariance
Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- noun The separation of a group of organisms by a geographic barrier, resulting in differentiation of the original group into new varieties or species
- noun The geological event which produces such a barrier (volcano, earthquake, etc)
Examples
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Another phenomenon of biological interest in this ecoregion is vicariance, due to the polar distribution between the west and east of the country.
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View two – the vicariance model – proposes that mekosuchines may have been present on New Caledonia, Fiji and elsewhere prior to their separation of these land masses from the Australian plate.
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The speaker explained it thus: as the Americas and the Old World rifted apart in distant geological times, the ancestral manatee species got separated and, presto, a vicariance event resulted in speciation.
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So some cases of geographic distribution may not be due to migration, but to the splitting of a formerly large, widespread population into small, isolated populations-what modern biologists call "vicariance."
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Previously, the ratites were used as a textbook example of vicariance, a term that describes the geographical division of a single species, resulting in two or more very similar sub-groups that can then undergo further evolutionary change and eventually become very distinct from one another.
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The refugia hypothesis thus spliced together disparate subjects, including paleoclimatology, biogeography and the concept of allopatric speciation due to vicariance (the prevention of genetic exchange by some sort of barrier), which had been recently amplified by Ernst Mayr.
Note
The word 'vicariance' comes from a Latin word meaning 'substitute'.