Experimental evolution

Dobzhansky and Pavlovsky (1971) reported a speciation event that occurred in a laboratory culture of Drosophila paulistorum sometime between 1958 and 1963.Thoday and Gibson (1962) established a population of Drosophila melanogaster from four gravid females. They applied selection on this population for flies with the highest and lowest numbers of sternoplural chaetae (hairs).Crossley (1974) was able to produce changes in mating behavior in two mutant strains of D. melanogaster.Kilias, et al. (1980) exposed D. melanogaster populations to different temperature and humidity regimes for several years. They performed mating tests to check for reproductive isolation.In a series of papers (Rice 1985, Rice and Salt 1988 and Rice and Salt 1990) Rice and Salt presented experimental evidence for the possibility of sympatric speciationIn a series of experiments, del Solar (1966) derived positively and negatively geotactic and phototactic strains of D. pseudoobscura from the same population by running the flies through mazes.