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Genetic Diversity...Speciation

Hawaiian Honeycreepers. (Figure from: Futuyama (1986), p. 33


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Notice the beak structure of the Hawaiian honeycreepers shown above. The beak differences are due to genetic diversity which has ultimately resulted in speciation.

How genetically diverse are humans, then? Research suggests that any two people differ by about 3,000,000 base pairs (base pairs are the physical individual components that make up your DNA; some genes may be coded for with only a few base pairs, others require thousands). Differing by three million base pairs may sound like a whole lot of diversity. However, this is only a difference in 0.1 percent of your entire genome. On the other hand, this can also be considered as a difference of thousands or even tens of thousands of genes.