Question

Adaptive radiation. For the questions below, select the best of the following choices.   Each may be used more than once or not at all.

1. Adaptive zone
2. Ecological opportunity
3. Competitive displacement
4. Key innovation
5. Convergence                                        

24. Of the two major mechanisms causing adaptive radiation, what is the most likely

explanation for the radiation of Galapagos finches?

ANSWER to #24:______

25. Of the two major mechanisms causing adaptive radiation, what is the most likely explanation for the radiation of flowering plants (angiosperms)?

ANSWER to #25:______

26. What is the most likely explanation for the radiation of rodents at the same time an otherwise similar group of non-placental mammals (i.e. the multituberculates) went extinct?

ANSWER to #26:______

Answer 1

Ans24. Ecological opportunity

Adaptive radiation refers to the process by which species adapts and diversify from their ancestral species rapidly into a multitude of new forms, particularly when a change in the environmental conditions makes new resources available, that creates new challenges, or opens new environmental niches. Ecological opportunity is one of the two major mechanisms causing adaptive radiation referring to the environmental conditions that permit the persistence of a lineage within a community, as well as generate divergent natural selection within that lineage, respectively. The darwin finches is the classical example of  Ecological opportunity of adaptive radiation.