Reblogged from Why Evolution Is True:
In my book Speciation, written with Allen Orr, we give some estimates about how long it takes to make a new species. These estimates vary, of course. In the case of speciation that involves instantaneous genome doubling, as in auto- or allopolyploidy, a new "hybrid" species can arise in as few as three generations. But under normal conditions the process usually takes hundreds of thousands to millions of years.