Observed Speciation

Ownbey, Marion.  “Natural hybridization and amphiploidy in the genus Tragopogon.”  American Journal of Botany 37(7):487–499.  1950.  Read in full on 2026-09-27 in the facsimile reprint in Paul R. Ehrlich, Richard W. Holm and Peter H. Raven (comps.), Papers on Evolution (Boston: Little, Brown, 1968), Internet Archive papersonevolutio0000ehrl, by archive.org search-inside (the item is print-disabled).  The reprint keeps the journal's page numbers;  they were checked against HathiTrust's full-text search of the journal volume (uc1.31175002405309) and the publisher's image of p. 487.  The abstract on the JSTOR page is the paper's printed Summary, p. 498.  Amphiploid is Ownbey's word for a fertile hybrid with doubled chromosomes.  Copyright.

1. 1a.

   Page 498, section Summary:  “They are accorded species rank, described and named T. mirus (amphiploid T. dubius x porrifolius) and T. miscellus (amphiploid T. dubius x pratensis).” ↩

2. 1b.

   Page 498, section Summary:  “Four small amphiploid populations were discovered in 1949. These represent apparently four recent and independent instances of the doubling of the chromosome sets, two cases each for the T. dubius x porrifolius and T. dubius x pratensis hybrids.” ↩ ↩

3. 1c.

   Page 493:  “Two colonies of this amphiploid (fig. 11) were studied, one in Pullman, Washington, and one in Palouse, Washington, 15 mi. away. … Two colonies of this amphiploid (fig. 4, 12) were studied, both in Moscow, Idaho.” ↩

4. 1d.

   Page 493:  “Each colony included between thirty and thirty-five individuals, scattered over a few hundred square yards. They were separated by about a mile.” ↩

5. 1e.

   Page 493:  “In the season of 1949 four small colonies were detected in which the members differed from the corresponding diploid hybrids in their very evident fertility and in the possession of conspicuous "gigas" features.” ↩

6. 1f.

   Page 497:  “(3) Gene interchange between the amphiploids and the parental species is prevented by a genetic barrier (ploidy level), and presumably residual sterility factors—evident in the F1 hybrids—would prevent free interbreeding between the two.” ↩

7. 1g.

   Page 497:  “The four known colonies probably represent four independent instances of chromosome doubling, and the subsequent establishment of the resultant tetraploid. Considering the frequency of all three F1 hybrid combinations, however, chromosome doubling must be an exceedingly rare event.” ↩

8. 1h.

   Page 497:  “Although the populations are still small and precarious, fertility is good and these species are competing successfully with their parents.” ↩

9. 1i.

   Page 498, section Summary:  “These diploid hybrids for all three species combinations are highly sterile, not more than 1-2 per cent of the flowers producing fruits with embryos.” ↩

10. 1j.

    Page 498, section Summary:  “They are moderately fertile, on the average from 52-66 per cent of the flowers producing fruits with embryos. They are established and true-breeding entities, although population size is still precariously small.” ↩

Sarfati, Jonathan.  “Arguments we think creationists should NOT use.”  Creation Ministries International.  Feb 7, 2006.  Retrieved Sep 27, 2026.  The page carries the date 7 February 2006 and has been revised since.  The list was first written when Creation Ministries International and Answers in Genesis were one organisation.  Copyright.

1. 2a.

   Section Which arguments should definitely not be used?:  “This is not true—new species have been observed to form. In fact, rapid speciation is an important part of the creation model. But this speciation is within the ‘kind’, and involves no new genetic information”.  The list entry is headed “No new species have been produced.” ↩ ↩ ↩

Coyne, Jerry A., and H. Allen Orr.  Speciation.  Sinauer Associates.  2004.  Read on archive.org, item speciation0000coyn, which cannot be borrowed, by searching inside it paragraph by paragraph.  The archive's own table of leaves gives printed page = leaf − 18 near the front of the book and leaf − 20 from chapter 4 on.  That was checked against the book's index in three places:  laboratory experiments at pages 88 to 89, Rhagoletis pomonella at page 162, and Tragopogon at page 265.  Copyright.

1. 3a.

   Pages 90–91:  “More than half of the published experiments showed either pre- or postzygotic isolation. Although this proportion may reflect a publication bias, obtaining isolation as a byproduct of selection cannot be rare. More surprisingly, such isolation can evolve within 10-100 generations, a blink of the eye in evolutionary time. Although in no case was reproductive isolation complete, one does not expect full speciation to occur in so few generations.”  The passage crosses from page 90 to page 91 in the middle of the word “proportion”.  The archive's text prints “Was” with a capital in the last sentence, which is a scanning error. ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 3b.

   Pages 321–322:  “produces triploid (3x) offspring. These progeny are often sterile because meiosis cannot proceed properly due to problems in chromosome pairing /segregation in a genome having an odd number of chromosome sets”.  “Our new tetraploid is therefore reproductively isolated from its diploid ancestors and—assuming it can give rise to an interbreeding population—represents a new species.”  The sentence begins at the foot of page 321 with the cross between a new tetraploid and a diploid. ↩

3. 3c.

   Page 322:  “polyploid speciation is instantaneous, sympatric, and may often involve population bottlenecks.”  “Polyploidy also represents the most profound difference between plant and animal speciation: as we will see, polyploid speciation is common in plants but rare in animals.” ↩

4. 3d.

   Page 327:  “A similar analysis suggests that 2%—4% of speciation events in angiosperms involve polyploidy (Otto and Whitton 2000).”  Wood and colleagues cite the same earlier estimates. ↩

5. 3e.

   Page 333:  “The rarity of polyploidy in animals compared to plants, which was recognized early on (Gates 1924; Muller 1925), probably represents “the greatest known difference between the evolutionary patterns in the two kingdoms” (Dobzhansky 1937b, p. 219).”  “We emphasize, however, that the correct answer remains unknown.” ↩

6. 3f.

   Page 334:  “Muller argued that the diploid sex-determining mechanism present in dioecious animals blocks polyploid speciation. Using Drosophila as a model, he showed that the cross of a new tetraploid individual to a diploid produces sterile intersexes, supermales, superfemales, etc.—everything but fertile tetraploids.”  “their list of insect and vertebrate cases shows that most polyploid animals are parthenogenetic”. ↩

7. 3g.

   Page 426:  “The most rapidly evolving isolating barriers, as opposed to complete speciation itself, are seen in the two host races of Rhagoletis pomonella. Some factors preventing gene flow, such as the preference of the apple race for volatile compounds of apples, must have arisen within the last 200 years. Other reproductive barriers between these races, however, might be much older (Chapter 4).”  Page 450:  “which form GCSC species but would probably not be accorded species status by the BSC.”  BSC is the biological species concept.  GCSC is the genotypic cluster species concept, which asks only for distinct clusters of genotypes. ↩ ↩

8. 3h.

   Page 89:  “All 19 experiments involved Diptera: house flies, melon flies, and Drosophila. All but one study incorporated post-selection tests for sexual isolation. Among all studies, ten resulted in behavioral isolation (positive assortative mating between lines), eight showed no behavioral isolation, and one gave equivocal results.” ↩

9. 3i.

   Pages 89–90:  “In most studies, however, sexual isolation was much lower: the mean among nine studies analyzed by Ringo et al (1985) was 0.12.” ↩

10. 3j.

    Page 90:  “In several experiments, however, sexual isolation emerged erratically, waxing and waning over the course of the study (Florin and Odeen 2002).” ↩

11. 3k.

    Page 90:  “In only three studies was postzygotic isolation examined properly”.  “Among these, only one experiment found such isolation”. ↩

12. 3l.

    Page 87:  “Given the rates of speciation estimated in nature (Chapter 12), we do not expect even long-term laboratory studies—those lasting 10-100 generations—to yield substantial reproductive isolation.” ↩

13. 3m.

    Page 87:  “The one exception appears to be Dobzhansky and Pavlovsky’s (1966) observation that a strain of Drosophila paulistorum raised in the laboratory for five years without selection showed hybrid male sterility in crosses with other conspecific strains. But this result may have been due to contamination of cultures by other subspecies.” ↩

Lim, K. Yoong et al.  “Rapid chromosome evolution in recently formed polyploids in Tragopogon (Asteraceae).”  PLoS ONE 3(10):e3353.  Oct 9, 2008.  Open access, CC BY.  Read from the publisher's page.

1. 4a.

   Section Introduction:  “The two allotetraploids now occupy a large geographic area of eastern Washington and adjacent Idaho, USA, and comprise many thousands of individuals in several populations. Molecular analyses have revealed that T. mirus has recurrently formed at least 13 times and T. miscellus possibly as many as 21 times”. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

Newton, W. C. F., and Caroline Pellew.  “Primula kewensis and its derivatives.”  Journal of Genetics 20(3):405–467.  1929.  Read from the scan hosted by the Indian Academy of Sciences.  The scan's text layer is unreliable, so every quotation here was read from the page image.  The printed page number is at the head of each page.

1. 5a.

   Page 424:  “The diploid hybrid has been observed to set seed on three occasions, and each time the seed produced has given rise to tetraploid plants. The first was in 1905, five years after the first appearance of the hybrid, in the nurseries of Messrs Veitch; the second, in 1923, at Kew; and the third, in 1926, at this Institution.”  “This Institution” is the John Innes Horticultural Institution. ↩ ↩

2. 5b.

   Page 406:  “Primula kewensis appeared originally at Kew in 1900 among seedlings of P. floribunda, and was supposed to be a hybrid between that species and P. verticillata”.  “On several occasions this highly sterile hybrid has produced fertile flowers, the seed of which gives rise to a fertile giant form. Within limits to be described more closely below, the fertile form breeds true.” ↩ ↩ ↩

3. 5c.

   Page 423:  “A single plant first appeared among seedlings of floribunda at Kew in 1899.”  Page 406 says 1900, and page 424 counts five years from the first appearance to 1905. ↩

4. 5d.

   Page 406:  “They found that the diploid number of chromosomes, alike in the parent species and in the sterile hybrid, was 18, while in the fertile giant form the number was 36. This was the first example of a sterile hybrid producing seed, the change being associated with a doubling of the number of chromosomes”.  “They” are Digby in 1912 and Farmer and Digby in 1914, whose papers were not read for this article. ↩

Buggs, Richard J. A. et al.  “Rapid, repeated, and clustered loss of duplicate genes in allopolyploid plant populations of independent origin.”  Current Biology 22(3):248–252.  2012.  Read from the publisher's open archive, which has no page numbers.  Copyright.

1. 6a.

   Section Frequency of Homeolog Loss:  “An average of 13 (∼20%) of the 70 loci investigated in each plant of T. miscellus were missing alleles of one homeolog, with high variation (min = 0, max = 33, SD = 6.8).”  “on average at least 7.7% (SD = 4.3) of the original 280 allele copies have been lost in an individual plant's lineage since WGD.”  WGD is whole-genome duplication.  A homeolog is one of the two parental copies of a gene. ↩ ↩

Wood, Troy E. et al.  “The frequency of polyploid speciation in vascular plants.”  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106(33):13875–13879.  2009.  Read from the PubMed Central copy, which has no page numbers.  Copyright.  Mirror:  PMC

1. 7a.

   Section Abstract:  “we establish that 15% of angiosperm and 31% of fern speciation events are accompanied by ploidy increase. These frequency estimates are higher by a factor of four than earlier estimates and lead to a standing incidence of polyploid species within genera of 35% (n = 1,506).” ↩

2. 7b.

   Section Results and Discussion:  “For angiosperms, we sampled 1,813 speciation events within 123 phylogenetic trees drawn from the plant systematic literature”.  “272 of the 1,813 events (15.00 ± 0.84%; ± SE) were accompanied by a shift to a higher ploidy level. For ferns, we examined 204 speciation events within 20 infrageneric phylogenetic trees; 64 (31.37 ± 3.26%) involved an increase in ploidy”.  123 trees of flowering plants and 20 of ferns make 143. ↩

3. 7c.

   Section Abstract:  “Despite this high incidence, we find no direct evidence that polyploid lines, once established, enjoy greater net species diversification.” ↩

Feder, Jeffrey L. et al.  “Host fidelity is an effective premating barrier between sympatric races of the apple maggot fly.”  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 91(17):7990–7994.  1994.  Read from the scan on PubMed Central.  The text layer misprints the sign for “about”, so the two passages with the 6% figure were read from the page images.  Copyright.  Mirror:  PMC

1. 8a.

   Page 7990:  “we confirm that host fidelity (i.e., the tendency of an insect to reproduce on the same host species that it used in earlier life-history stages) restricts gene flow between sympatric apple- and hawthorn-infesting races of Rhagoletis pomonella (Diptera: Tephritidae) to ≈6% per generation.” ↩ ↩

2. 8b.

   Page 7994:  “The Rhagoletis story is not complete, however. The ≈6% level of genetic exchange between apple-origin and hawthorn-origin populations suggests that some as yet unidentified form of host-associated, postmating selection prevents fusion of the races.” ↩

3. 8c.

   Page 7990:  “R. pomonella are univoltine”. ↩ ↩

Lamichhaney, Sangeet et al.  “Rapid hybrid speciation in Darwin’s finches.”  Science 359(6372):224–228.  2018.  Only the abstract was read.  The body is behind a login.  Copyright.

1. 9a.

   Section Abstract:  “Homoploid hybrid speciation in animals has been inferred frequently from patterns of variation, but few examples have withstood critical scrutiny. Here we report a directly documented example, from its origin to reproductive isolation.”  “From the second generation onward, the lineage bred endogamously and, despite intense inbreeding, was ecologically successful and showed transgressive segregation of bill morphology. This example shows that reproductive isolation, which typically develops over hundreds of generations, can be established in only three.” ↩ ↩

Haba, Yuki et al.  “Ancient origin of an urban underground mosquito.”  Science 390.  Oct 23, 2025.  Article number eady4515.  Read from the copy hosted by the Royal Museum for Central Africa.  The article is paged 1 to 13, after an unnumbered summary page.  A preprint was posted on bioRxiv on 28 January 2025.  Copyright.  Mirror:  Africamuseum.be

1. 10a.

   Page 1:  “Population genomic analysis of ~350 contemporary and historical samples counters the popular hypothesis that molestus originated belowground in London <200 years ago. Instead, we show that molestus first adapted to human environments aboveground in the Mediterranean or Middle East over the course of more than 1000 years, possibly in association with ancient agricultural civilizations of the Middle East.” ↩ ↩

2. 10b.

   Section Research article summary, Conclusion:  “Our work debunks one of the most widely cited examples of rapid urban adaptation—an example that has captured the attention of scientists and laypeople for 25 years.”  The summary page is not numbered and comes before page 1. ↩

3. 10c.

   Page 4:  “Accurate assignment of dates to this rCC curve requires knowledge of the de novo mutation rate (μ) and generation time (g), neither of which has been directly measured for Cx. pipiens in nature.”  “suggest that peak rates of divergence occurred ~2000 years ago (Fig. 4C, dashed arrow), whereas minimum and maximum reasonable values (32) lead to split times anywhere between 1300 and 12,500 years ago”.  The rate used is 4.85 × 10^-9 per site per generation and the generation time is 20 days.  The exponent was checked against the Methods on page 9. ↩

4. 10d.

   Section Research article summary, Introduction:  “Form molestus features prominently in textbooks as well as scholarly reviews of urban adaptation. Yet, the hypothesis of in situ urban evolution has never been rigorously tested.” ↩

Wieland, Carl.  “Brisk biters.”  Creation 21(2):41.  Mar 1999.  Retrieved Sep 27, 2026.  Read from the web copy, dated 25 January 2006.  Wieland was then the head of the organisation that became Creation Ministries International.  Copyright.

1. 11a.

   Paragraph 1–2:  “About 100 years ago, bird-biting mosquitoes called Culex pipiens entered the tunnels then being dug for the London Underground (the ‘Tube’).”  “British scientists have now found that it is almost impossible to mate those in the Tube with the ones still living above ground, thus suggesting that they have become a new species”. ↩ ↩

Lamb, Andrew.  “Evolution by fiat and faith.”  Creation Ministries International.  Mar 30, 2007.  Retrieved Sep 27, 2026.  Copyright.

1. 12a.

   Section Polyploidy:  “A polyploid plant will usually not be able to breed with the parent species, and can consistently produce offspring with the same number of chromosome sets as itself. This can then be considered a new species. Note that there is no new genetic information involved, just repetition of existing information.” ↩ ↩ ↩

Tate, Jennifer A. et al.  “Evolution and expression of homeologous loci in Tragopogon miscellus (Asteraceae), a recent and reciprocally formed allopolyploid.”  Genetics 173(3):1599–1611.  2006.  Read from the PubMed Central copy, which has no page numbers.  Copyright.

1. 13a.

   Section Introduction:  “This system represents a classic example of instantaneous speciation via polyploidy. Following the introduction of three diploid (2n = 12) species (Tragopogon dubius, T. pratensis, and T. porrifolius) from Europe to western North America during the early 1900s, two allotetraploid species (T. mirus and T. miscellus) formed (Ownbey 1950).” ↩

2. 13b.

   Section Introduction:  “when T. pratensis is the maternal parent, T. miscellus has short-ligulate ray flowers, and when T. dubius is the maternal parent, T. miscellus has long-ligulate ray flowers (Ownbey 1950; Ownbey and McCollum 1953). Only one existing population of T. miscellus is long liguled (Pullman, WA); all others (∼40) are short liguled (Novak et al. 1991).” ↩

3. 13c.

   Section Abstract:  “Most of the cDNA–AFLP polymorphisms apparently resulted from loss of parental fragments in the polyploids. Importantly, changes at the genomic level have occurred stochastically among individuals within the independently formed populations. Synthetic F1 hybrids between putative diploid progenitors are additive of their parental genomes, suggesting that polyploidization rather than hybridization induces genomic changes in Tragopogon.” ↩

Tate, Jennifer A. et al.  “Synthetic polyploids of Tragopogon miscellus and T. mirus (Asteraceae): 60 years after Ownbey’s discovery.”  American Journal of Botany 96(5):979–988.  2009.  Only the abstract was read, from Europe PMC.  Copyright.

1. 14a.

   Section Abstract:  “We have made the first synthetic lines of T. mirus and T. miscellus using T. dubius, T. porrifolius, and T. pratensis as parents and colchicine treatment of F(1) hybrids.”  “Morphologically, the synthetics resemble the natural polyploids with short- and long-liguled forms of T. miscellus resulting when T. pratensis and T. dubius are reciprocally crossed.”  Europe PMC prints the subscript in F1 as F(1). ↩

Ashton, Paul A., and Richard J. Abbott.  “Multiple origins and genetic diversity in the newly arisen allopolyploid species, Senecio cambrensis Rosser (Compositae).”  Heredity 68:25–32.  1992.  Read from the publisher's scan, which is free.  Copyright.

1. 15a.

   Page 25:  “The hybrid between these plants is a sterile triploid which can give rise to the fertile allohexaploid by a doubling of the chromosome complement.”  “The species was first described from the wild by Rosser (1955) following its discovery in 1948 by H. E. Green at Cefn-y-Bedd, near Wrexham, Denbighshire, North Wales.”  The same page dates the first contact of the parents in North Wales to about 1910 and reports that the species had been made artificially with colchicine.  The place name is broken across two lines in the original. ↩

2. 15b.

   Page 25:  “For no enzyme system were additional allozymes found in S. cambrensis which were not present in one of the respective parents.” ↩ ↩

Abbott, R. J., and D. G. Forbes.  “Extinction of the Edinburgh lineage of the allopolyploid neospecies, Senecio cambrensis Rosser (Asteraceae).”  Heredity 88:267–269.  2002.  Free to read.  Copyright.

1. 16a.

   Page 267:  “The lineage was present in Edinburgh from at least 1974 and therefore survived in the wild for a minimum of 19 years. The species remains well established in parts of North Wales.” ↩

Ainouche, M. L. et al.  “Spartina anglica C. E. Hubbard: a natural model system for analysing early evolutionary changes that affect allopolyploid genomes.”  Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 82(4):475–484.  2004.  Only the abstract was read.  Copyright.

1. 17a.

   Section Abstract:  “Spartina anglica arose during the end of the 19th century in England by hybridization between the indigenous Spartina maritima and the introduced East American Spartina alterniflora and following genome duplication of the hybrid (S. × townsendii).”  “Various molecular data indicate that S. anglica has resulted from a unique parental genotype. This young species contains two distinctly divergent homoeologous genomes that have not undergone extensive change since their reunion.” ↩ ↩

Vallejo-Marín, Mario.  “Mimulus peregrinus (Phrymaceae): A new British allopolyploid species.”  PhytoKeys 14:1–14.  2012.  Open access, CC BY.  Read from the PubMed Central copy.

1. 18a.

   Section Methods:  “Field surveys in August 2011 uncovered the existence of fertile individuals in a large population of Mimulus × robertsii in South Lanarkshire, Scotland.”  The abstract gives the chromosome numbers:  92 in the new species, 44 to 45 in the sterile hybrid, 28 and 60 to 62 in the parents. ↩

2. 18b.

   Section Abstract:  “an example of recent allopolyploid speciation.”  The sentence says that the evidence suggests the species may constitute such an example.  The PubMed Central copy runs the words “may” and “constitute” together, so they are paraphrased here and not quoted. ↩

Abbott, Richard J., and Andrew J. Lowe.  “Origins, establishment and evolution of new polyploid species: Senecio cambrensis and S. eboracensis in the British Isles.”  Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 82(4):467–474.  2004.  Only the abstract was read.  Copyright.

1. 19a.

   Section Abstract:  “One of these is the allohexaploid S. cambrensis (2n = 60), the other is the recombinant tetraploid S. eboracensis (2n = 40).” ↩

Lowe, A. J., and R. J. Abbott.  “Reproductive isolation of a new hybrid species, Senecio eboracensis Abbott & Lowe (Asteraceae).”  Heredity 92:386–395.  2004.  Free to read.  Copyright.

1. 20a.

   Page 386:  “No hybrid offspring between S. eboracensis and S. squalidus were found in the wild, and only one such hybrid was recorded among 769 progeny produced by S. eboracensis surrounded by S. squalidus on an experimental plot. Natural crossing between S. eboracensis and S. vulgaris was recorded to be very low (between 0 and 1.46%) in the wild, but rose to 18.3% when individuals of S. eboracensis were surrounded by plants of S. vulgaris.”  The abstract on the same page gives the seed set of the hybrids:  0.63% for the cross with S. squalidus, and 63.8% and 58.8% for the first two generations of the cross with S. vulgaris.  Page 387 dates the discovery to 1979. ↩

2. 20b.

   Page 386:  “in the outcrossing, homoploid hybrid species, Helianthus anomalus and H. paradoxus, prezygotic isolation is achieved from both parent taxa, H. annuus and H. petiolaris, by ecological separation”.  A third species, H. deserticola, is usually named with these two.  It is treated in the body of Rieseberg's 2003 paper, which was not read. ↩

Karpechenko, G. D.  “Hybrids of ♀ Raphanus sativus L. × ♂ Brassica oleracea L.”  Journal of Genetics 14(3):375–396.  1924.  Read from the scan hosted by the Indian Academy of Sciences.  The later paper on the fertile polyploids, in Zeitschrift für induktive Abstammungs- und Vererbungslehre 48:1–85 (1928), was not obtained.

1. 21a.

   Page 394:  Point 8 of the Summary says that the hybrids remain sterile when crossed with each other or with the parental forms.  The scan's text layer is too damaged to quote. ↩

Boxhorn, Joseph.  “Observed Instances of Speciation.”  TalkOrigins Archive.  Sep 1, 1995.  Retrieved Sep 27, 2026.  The archived copy prints “Last Update: September 1, 1995”.  The byline is blank in both copies read;  the attribution to Boxhorn is the archive's.  Copyright.  Mirror:  Archive.org

1. 22a.

   Section 5.1.1.4 Raphanobrassica:  “Plants grown from the seeds were interfertile with each other. They were not interfertile with either parental species.” ↩

2. 22b.

   Section 1.1 Acknowledgements:  “My starting point was the references contained in the old speciation FAQ. I wish to thank the authors of this, Chris Stassen, James Meritt, Anneliese Lilje and L. Drew Davis.” ↩

3. 22c.

   Section 5.5.1 Apple Maggot Fly:  “It is important to note that some of the leading researchers on this question are urging caution in interpreting it.” ↩

The scoring procedure of Measuring Biological Information asks four questions in order.  Question 1 asks whether the sequence arrived from another species.  In a hybrid, each parent's genome arrives in a cell that holds the other's, so the cross is scored as a transfer.  Question 4 covers an existing element that “is present in more copies”, which describes doubling.  Both classes count zero new nucleotides under that article's conversion rule:  zero for a transfer in the receiver, and zero for a copy.  The sibling article on sticklebacks scores extra copies of the Fads2 gene the same way.  The later losses are not scored, because the procedure does not score a change that has not been shown to help the organism.  Restored fertility is a benefit to the hybrid line, so the doubling itself is scored. ↩

Sarfati, Jonathan.  “Refutation of New Scientist’s Evolution: 24 myths and misconceptions.”  Creation Ministries International.  Dec 3, 2008.  Retrieved Sep 27, 2026.  Copyright.

1. 24a.

   Section Natural selection leads to ever-greater complexity:  “In plants, but not in animals (possibly with rare exceptions), the doubling of all the chromosomes may result in an individual which can no longer interbreed with the parent type—this is called polyploidy. Although this may technically be called a new species, because of the reproductive isolation, no new information has been produced, just repetitious doubling of existing information.” ↩

Chester, Michael et al.  “Extensive chromosomal variation in a recently formed natural allopolyploid species, Tragopogon miscellus (Asteraceae).”  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109(4):1176–1181.  2012.  Read from the PubMed Central copy, which has no page numbers.  Copyright.  Mirror:  PMC

1. 25a.

   Section Introduction:  “This species is ∼80 y old (ca. 40 generations for this biennial), having formed repeatedly in North America after the introduction of its diploid (2n = 12) progenitors, Tragopogon dubius and Tragopogon pratensis, from Europe in the early 1900s”. ↩

2. 25b.

   Section Abstract:  “No population was fixed for a particular karyotype; 76% of the individuals showed intergenomic translocations, and 69% were aneuploid for one or more chromosomes.” ↩

3. 25c.

   Section Introduction:  “However, over recent time scales, polyploids diversify more slowly than their diploid relatives and are more likely to go extinct, perhaps due in part to the unstable nature of neopolyploids”.  The source cites Mayrose and colleagues, Science 333:1257 (2011), which was not read for this article. ↩

Soltis, Douglas E. et al.  “Recent and recurrent polyploidy in Tragopogon (Asteraceae): cytogenetic, genomic and genetic comparisons.”  Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 82(4):485–501.  2004.  Only the abstract was read.  Its statement that the chromosomes showed no major rearrangement was overtaken by Chester and colleagues in 2012.  Copyright.

1. 26a.

   Section Abstract:  “Approximately 5% of the genes examined in the allopolyploid populations have been silenced, and an additional 4% exhibit novel gene expression relative to their diploid parents.” ↩

At least 13 origins of T. mirus plus possibly as many as 21 of T. miscellus is 34.⁴  The parents arrived in the early 1900s and the counts were published in 2008, a span of about eighty years once the parents had spread.  The figure of 21 is an upper estimate in the source, so 34 is the larger of the possible totals and the text should be read as “up to 34”. ↩

Mable, Barbara K.  “‘Why polyploidy is rarer in animals than in plants’: myths and mechanisms.”  Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 82(4):453–466.  2004.  Only the abstract was read.  Copyright.

1. 28a.

   Section Abstract:  “Although polyploidy has been involved in speciation in both animals and plants, the general perception is often that it is too rare to have been a significant factor in animal evolution and its role in plant diversification has been questioned. These views have resulted in a bias towards explanations for what deters polyploidy, rather than the somewhat more interesting question of the mechanisms by which polyploidy arises and becomes established in both plants and animals.” ↩

Walsh, Benjamin D.  “The apple-worm and the apple-maggot.”  The American Journal of Horticulture and Florist’s Companion 2:338–343.  J. E. Tilton.  1867.  Public domain.  Read from the archive.org scan.  The page numbers are the printed ones, which the scan's page index supplies and the running head on page 338 confirms.

1. 29a.

   Page 338:  “The second larva, the apple-maggot, is a native-American species, and breeds naturally in our wild haws and crabs, but, within the last few years, has been noticed to attack the cultivated apple in Massachusetts, in Connecticut, in New York, and probably in Vermont also.” ↩ ↩

2. 29b.

   Page 338:  “It would seem as if, in this as in many other cases, it is only a local race of the species that has acquired the habit of attacking tame and imported instead of wild and indigenous species of plants; and that this race transmits to its descendants, by the law of inheritance, the peculiar habits which it has itself incidentally acquired.”  Walsh's explanation is the inheritance of an acquired habit, which is not the modern account. ↩

Feder, Jeffrey L. et al.  “Allopatric genetic origins for sympatric host-plant shifts and race formation in Rhagoletis.”  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 100(18):10314–10319.  2003.  Read from the PubMed Central copy, which has no page numbers.  Copyright.  Mirror:  PMC

1. 30a.

   Section Introduction:  “Bush (4) later hypothesized that the entire complex of six or more sibling species comprising the R. pomonella group, to which the apple maggot belongs, arose by means of sympatric host shifts.”  Bush's paper, Evolution 23:237–251 (1969), could not be obtained and is cited through this description of it. ↩

2. 30b.

   Section Introduction:  “In particular, the 3- to 4-week earlier phenology of apple selects for a deeper pupal diapause (greater recalcitrance to nondiapause development) in apple flies, allowing them to better withstand longer periods of warm weather before winter.” ↩

3. 30c.

   Section Introduction:  “The host races display significant allele frequency, but not fixed, genetic differences for six allozymes mapping to three different regions of the genome (7, 8). (Frequency differences average from 0.10 to 0.20 at sympatric sites, but are often as high as 0.3.)” ↩

4. 30d.

   Section Introduction:  “Thus, the sympatrically derived apple race was extracted, in part, from preexisting adaptive inversion clines in the haw race.”  The abstract dates the separation of the Mexican and northern populations to about 1.57 million years ago, from sequence differences. ↩

Feder, Jeffrey L. et al.  “Genetic differentiation between sympatric host races of the apple maggot fly Rhagoletis pomonella.”  Nature 336:61–64.  1988.  Only the abstract was read.  Copyright.

1. 31a.

   Section Abstract:  “We report finding genetic differentiation between co-occurring hawthorn and apple populations of R. pomonella at a field site near Grant, Michigan. The result confirms that hawthorn and apple flies represent partially reproductively isolated 'host races' and is consistent with a sympatric mode of divergence for these flies.”  The same abstract places the shift to apples “in the past 200 years”. ↩ ↩

Feder and colleagues state that the flies have one generation a year.⁸  Their 1988 paper places the shift “in the past 200 years”, and Walsh in 1867 says “within the last few years”.^{31 29}  At one generation a year, 200 years is 200 generations.  If the shift began about 1860, the measurements of 1994 were made about 134 generations later.  Six percent gene flow leaves 100 − 6 = 94% isolation before mating. ↩

Byrne, Katharine, and Richard A. Nichols.  “Culex pipiens in London Underground tunnels: differentiation between surface and subterranean populations.”  Heredity 82:7–15.  1999.  Free to read.  Copyright.

1. 33a.

   Page 13:  “no offspring were recorded from crosses between Underground and surface populations.”  Page 14 of the paper notes that infection with the bacterium Wolbachia can make crosses between mosquito populations fail. ↩

2. 33b.

   Page 13:  “Little evidence has been found to support the proposal that the London Underground was colonized from this source. The alleles found in the Underground do not include any that are otherwise found only outside Britain.” ↩

3. 33c.

   Page 14:  “As it appears plausible that colonization of the London Underground has occurred only once, the reproductive isolation could have accumulated in the few hundred generations since then.” ↩

Tay, Joel.  “Is speciation different from evolution?”  Creation Ministries International.  May 16, 2018.  Retrieved Aug 15, 2026.  Tay is a speaker and writer for Creation Ministries International.  The date is the one in the page's own data.  Copyright.

1. 34a.

   Section Reply to the reader, paragraph 1:  “In fact, we had written about how the rapid rate of speciation continues to astonish evolutionists in cases of new species of mosquitoes , weeds , and house mice .”  Each of the three words is a link in the original, which is why a space stands before each comma in the copy read. ↩

2. 34b.

   Section Reply to the reader, paragraph 1:  “The Biblical Creation model actually predicts and requires not just speciation, but rapid speciation! Creationists believe that after the Flood, each animal kind (baramin) rapidly diversified, over just a few thousand years, often forming new species in the process. But speciation is not evolution!” ↩

Haba, Yuki, and Lindy McBride.  “Origin and status of Culex pipiens mosquito ecotypes.”  Current Biology 32(5):R237–R246.  2022.  Read from the author manuscript on PubMed Central, which has no page numbers.  It spells Nichols as Nicols.  Copyright.  Mirror:  PMC

1. 35a.

   Section The contentious theory of in situ adaptation in the London Underground:  “The London Underground Mosquito almost certainly did not evolve de novo from local aboveground populations within the last 200 years, but there are still many interesting questions to answer surrounding its ultimate origin and spread.”  The reports from Paris and Toulouse in 1929 are in the section headed “Culex pipiens comprises distinct above and belowground ecotypes in colder northern climates”.  The 1775 name is in the section quoted. ↩

Rieseberg, Loren H. et al.  “Role of gene interactions in hybrid speciation: evidence from ancient and experimental hybrids.”  Science 272(5262):741–745.  1996.  Only the abstract was read.  Copyright.

1. 36a.

   Section Abstract:  “To study this process, the genomic composition of three experimentally synthesized hybrid lineages was compared with that of an ancient hybrid species. The genomic composition of the synthesized and ancient hybrids was concordant (rs = 0.68, P < 0.0001), indicating that selection to a large extent governs hybrid species formation.” ↩

Rieseberg, Loren H. et al.  “Major ecological transitions in wild sunflowers facilitated by hybridization.”  Science 301(5637):1211–1216.  2003.  Only the abstract was read.  Copyright.

1. 37a.

   Section Abstract:  “In sunflowers, species found in the most extreme habitats are ancient hybrids, and new gene combinations generated by hybridization are speculated to have contributed to ecological divergence. This possibility was tested through phenotypic and genomic comparisons of ancient and synthetic hybrids. Most trait differences in ancient hybrids could be recreated by complementary gene action in synthetic hybrids and were favored by selection.” ↩

Dodd, Diane M. B.  “Reproductive isolation as a consequence of adaptive divergence in Drosophila pseudoobscura.”  Evolution 43(6):1308–1311.  1989.  Read from the publisher's scan.  The printed page numbers are on the pages.  Copyright.

1. 38a.

   Page 1309:  “Averaging the isolation indices within the three categories illustrates the general pattern: 0.33 for the tests of starch versus maltose, 0.05 for the tests within the starch regime, and -0.01 for the tests within the maltose regime.”  Page 1308 gives the origin of the populations, the 1,558 matings, and the definition of the index. ↩ ↩

Dodd defines the index as same-type matings minus different-type matings, divided by all matings.³⁸  If the share of same-type matings is h, the index is h − (1 − h) = 2h − 1.  An index of 0.33 gives h = (1 + 0.33) ÷ 2 = 0.665, or about two in three.  Eleven of her sixteen starch-by-maltose pairings were statistically significant on their own, with indexes from 0.30 to 0.49, and all sixteen were positive. ↩

Rice, William R., and Ellen E. Hostert.  “Laboratory experiments on speciation: what have we learned in 40 years?”  Evolution 47(6):1637–1653.  1993.  Read from the publisher's scan.  Copyright.

1. 40a.

   Page 1637:  “Strong support is found for the evolution of reproductive isolation via pleiotropy and/or genetic hitchhiking with or without allopatry. Little or no support is found for the bottleneck and reinforcement models of speciation.” ↩

2. 40b.

   Page 1647:  The passage contrasts strong selection on many traits at once, which it says can lead to complete isolation and for which it cites Rice and Salt 1990, with strong selection on one trait, which it says typically leads to incomplete isolation.  It is paraphrased here because the scan's text layer misprints its punctuation.  Rice and Salt's paper, Evolution 44:1140, was not read. ↩

Answers in Genesis.  “Arguments we think creationists should NOT use.”  Answers in Genesis.  n.d.  Retrieved Sep 1, 2026.  Read from the Internet Archive's copy of 1 January 2007.  The page carries no date of its own.  Copyright.

1. 41a.

   Section “No new species have been produced.”:  “This is not true—new species have been observed to form. In fact, rapid speciation is an important part of the creation model. But this speciation is within the “kind,” and involves no new genetic information.” ↩

Garner, Paul.  “Do Species Change?”  Answers.  Jan 1, 2009.  Retrieved Sep 27, 2026.  From the issue of January to March 2009.  Garner is a British creationist writer and geologist.  Copyright.

1. 42a.

   Section The Bible Was Not the Problem:  “To his credit, Darwin corrected a popular misunderstanding. Species do change. Since Darwin’s day, many observations have confirmed this. In fact, new species have even been shown to arise within a single human lifetime.” ↩

Ramgren, Jake.  “The Case for Rapid Speciation.”  New Creation Blog.  Jul 23, 2025.  Retrieved Aug 15, 2026.  The blog is published by Core Academy of Science, a creationist research group.  Copyright.

1. 43a.

   Section Is Microevolution Enough?, paragraph 2:  “Creationism requires the origin of species just as much as Darwin did, and most scientists would consider “new species” to be “macroevolution.” Of course, creationists still limit these changes to within created kinds.” ↩

Dobzhansky, Theodosius, and Olga Pavlovsky.  “Experimentally created incipient species of Drosophila.”  Nature 230:289–292.  1971.  Only the abstract was read.  Stassen's list gives the volume as 23.  Copyright.

1. 44a.

   Section Abstract:  “By means of selection in many generations, ethological (sexual) isolation has been built between strains of Drosophila which were formerly not reproductively isolated.” ↩

Miller, Wolfgang J. et al.  “Infectious speciation revisited: impact of symbiont-depletion on female fitness and mating behavior of Drosophila paulistorum.”  PLoS Pathogens 6(12):e1001214.  Dec 2, 2010.  Open access, CC BY.

1. 45a.

   Section Abstract:  “We have isolated the α-proteobacteria Wolbachia as the maternally transmitted core endosymbionts of all D. paulistorum semispecies that have coevolved towards obligate mutualism with their respective native hosts. In hybrids, however, these mutualists transform into pathogens by overreplication causing embryonic inviability and male sterility.”  The paper does not discuss the strain of 1958.  That the sterility seen in it had this cause is a possibility raised by this article, and no more. ↩

Rodríguez-Trelles, Francisco et al.  “Presumptive rapid speciation after a founder event in a laboratory population of Nereis: allozyme electrophoretic evidence does not support the hypothesis.”  Evolution 50(1):457–461.  1996.  Only the title and citation were read;  the paper is behind a paywall and the publisher shows no abstract.  The original claim is Weinberg and colleagues, Evolution 46:1214 (1992), as reported by Boxhorn in his section 5.7. ↩

Stassen, Chris et al.  “Some More Observed Speciation Events.”  TalkOrigins Archive.  1997.  Retrieved Sep 27, 2026.  The page gives its copyright as 1992 to 1997.  Copyright.

1. 47a.

   Section Example three:  “Test for speciation in this case is based on morphology. It is unlikely that forced breeding experiments have been performed with the parent stock.” ↩