This population probably diverged from mainland rice rats about 2000 years ago.

It has been particularly useful in understanding how populations diverge and how reproductive barriers arise.

Isolated populations can diverge more quickly if they have differing resources, however, as they adapt through natural selection to their different environments.

Studies of mitochondrial DNA conducted within the continent of Africa have shown that the indigenous population has diverged into three divergent main lines of descent.

According to the anthropologist Henry Harpending, human populations are actually diverging from one another, as opposed to melding into a single population.

Ring species provide important evidence of evolution: they illustrate what happens over time as populations genetically diverge.

Although suitable habitat is distributed continentally, it is discontinuous, and the separate populations of this non-migratory species have diverged to form distinct regional subspecies.

The two populations diverged as access to other genetic sources were accessible to one population and not the other.

After the populations had diverged over many generations, the groups were again mixed; it was observed that the flies would mate only with others from their adapted population.

Coyne and Orr remark that populations may diverge in male signals because of intrasexual selection (competition among males), and that female mate preference may follow.