Frozen Evolution. Or, that’s not the way it is, Mr. Darwin. A Farewell to Selfish Gene.

Adaptive radiation can occur through a quite different mechanism.If a member of a certain species enters a territory where there are no members of a great many taxa, for example if it gets to a newly formed volcanic island far from the mainland, it can rapidly undergo series of speciations and its descendants can occupy niches that are already occupied by other species on the mainland.The phylogenetically highly related but ecologically very diversified species of Darwin’s finches on the Galapagos and the Drepanididae on the Hawaiian Islands evolved in this way (Craddock 2000)(see Fig. XXVII.3). The king of the hill effect is very frequently active in both macroevolution and microevolution (see XXII.5.5).As soon as an ecological niche (or even a habitat) is already occupied by a certain species (for a habitat, a certain population), this species cannot be simply forced out by a species (population) whose members penetrated there at a later time.The factor favoring the current “king of the hill” consists in the greater number of the original species, which enables it to better resist any random fluctuations in the size of the population, and also its momentarily better adaptation to the local conditions.The newly arrived species (population) might, in the future, be able to adapt to the given conditions just as well or even better; however, competition from the “king of the hill” provides no scope for this.