Question

In New England, two groups of interbreeding birds that look similar to each other share the same habitat. However, their songs have a different pitch. Describe an experiment that would determine whether sympatric speciation is occurring in this population. Be sure to include data or observations that would help make this determination.

Answer 1

The best way to do this would be to see whether the newly bred generation of birds from both species is any different in various possible phenotypical characteristics from the generation that would be bred from only one species and also from only the other species. To determine this we would obviously and of course use the observed data.