Question 2 (Essay Worth 10 points) There are 15 species of snapping shrimp in th

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Question 2 (Essay Worth 10 points) There are 15 species of snapping shrimp in the Atlantic Ocean and 15 species of snapping shrimp in the Pacific Ocean. Some of the while others live in deeper water. The Allantic and Pacific oceans are separated by the Isthmus of Panama. Geological evidence shows that the Isthmus of Panama started rising about 10 million years ago, completely separating the two oceans by about three million years ago. species live in shallow water Design a plan for collecting the data that you would need to determine whether reproductive isolation has led to speciation. In your response, be sure to include: ·the variables you plan to use a detailed description of the experiment how data would be collectecd how data would be analyzed

Explanation / Answer

The best approach to demonstrate speciation is by means of a cladogram.

A cladogram shows us how related or distant one species are from another as well as seeing where the common ancestors are.

The plan is quite simple because it consists of trapping specimens of each species and choosing which method to classify. Nowadays the molecular methods are the best to show the closeness of the species and if they are really related (as there are cases where convergent evolution occurs, the typical example is that of actinomycetes and fungi in which to share the same ecological niche it was thought that they belonged to the same group, however the molecular methods allowed to show that actinomycetes are related to bacteria instead of fungi).

The interesting thing is the design of the experiment and to process the information. To design an experiment you must have a hypothesis. In this case the hypothesis is that from the formation of the Panama Strait certain species of crustaceans were isolated (vacariance phenomenon) this reproductive isolation caused a different speciation.

You have to set the variables. The independent variable must be isolated since it is the center of our experiment, while the dependent variable is the measurable results. In this case the measurable results (the dependient variable) would be how related the shrimp are to one another based on the sequence of their DNA. Even more so since each species comes from different places it is also another variable to consider the origin of the sample.

Now once we have captured the shrimp, we must first classify them in a taxonomic way to assign them in a group (in this case, their species).

Once we have the classified shrimp, we have to macerate them. This with the aim of having their cells. Once we have the cells of each species of shrimp, we must extract their DNA by using detergents and buffers in order to obtain high purity DNA. This DNA can be sent to sequence.  

Once we have the DNA sequences of each species of shrimp we can use different programs to buy the DNA sequences of each shrimp. With some computer program we can make an alignment of the sequences to see the percentage of homology between each species (This is made trough a BLAST [Basic Local Alignament Search Tool]).

Ideally, first make an alignment of each species obtained from the side of the Pacific Ocean and then an alignment of each species obtained from the Atlantic side to see the speciation of each side of the ocean and get a cladogram of each side of the ocean and see the process of speciation on each side to then make an alignment between all the species and corroborate this phenomenon of speciation.

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