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The fact that members of all of these groups readily hybridize would violate some interpretations of the concept of species. The article exposes the arbitrarine
by eggie 11y ago
The fact that members of all of these groups readily hybridize would violate some interpretations of the concept of species. The article exposes the arbitrariness of the concept. Also, mtDNA and microsatellites (short stretches of repetitive DNA that expand and contract quickly) offer only a fragmentary picture of genetic history. It is unfortunate that the researchers were not able to use modern sequencing techniques, but in the case of museum samples these are sometimes not possible.
- btilly 11y agoThe existence of ring species says that there must be arbitrariness in deciding where to draw the line. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species for an explanation. That said, where and when hybridization is possible is a complex question. For example consider the following pairs of species. (polar bears, brown bears), (horses, donkeys), (humans, chimpanzees). All are at about the same evolutionary distance from each other (current estimates are 5 million years, 4.5 million years and 6 million years). The bears happily interbreed, the equines interbreed but the babies are not generally fertile, and there are no reports of successful human/chimpanzee crosses. (No reports of anyone admitting to trying either, but it would be hard to believe that the attempt was nowhere made.) Yet in all three cases, biologists generally agree that those are pairs of distinct species.
- ChrisGranger 11y agoI learned of the Ivanov experiments after the topic of hybridization came up at a blog I used to follow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Ivanovich_Ivanov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Ivanovich_Ivanov