Wouldn't the classic illustrative case of this be the Galapagos finches? Geographical separation in the generally accepted sense not possible, so the result is diversification, and eventually speciation, into econiches defined by feeding behavior, that eventually become a kind of "micro-geographical" separation? And isn't the diversity of Eastern American warblers a similar phenomenon? Perhaps one of the specialists on the list could comment....

James West
----- Original Message -----
From: JLRosso at aol.com
To: rsaecker at thurston.com ; Steve.Aubert at metrokc.gov ; grubsy at msn.com ; tweeters at u.washington.edu
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2001 9:53 PM
Subject: Re: crow question


I am curious if there are any studies that have shown that within a species a
population did separate itself off by becoming very specialized in their
feeding behavior and thus became a distinct species. I know that most species
are the result of geographical separation, but what are the chances that a
geographical separation could have been caused by prey specialization? (It
probably makes more sense that the geographical isolation preceeded the prey
specialization.)

Jim Rosso
Sammamish
jlrosso at aol.com
http://birdcentral.net/index.htm