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> a species is basically the pool of organisms available at a period of time that can generate progeny that themselves can generate progeny That's what we lear
by mortehu 11y ago
> a species is basically the pool of organisms available at a period of time that can generate progeny that themselves can generate progeny
That's what we learned in high-school too, but as you mentioned, it doesn't make sense for donkeys, nor does it work for ring species[1], or organisms that reproduce asexually[2]. Mules can occasionally become mothers[3].
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asexual_reproduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asexual_reproduction
3. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12260255 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1226025...
- sageikosa 11y agoI wasn't familiar with the term "Ring Species" (I've only gotten interested in evolutionary biology in the past few years), although I had considered that a "pool" might have a relatively fluctuating degrees of mutuality and incompatibility among candidate members. Also, I hadn't considered to qualify "sexual reproduction", as asexual reproduction might be better thought of as strains (perhaps), the classification systems for simpler organisms tends to be more structural than fecund. In my defense, I tend to refer to organisms as assemblages of organs of which simpler biota can loosely be said to possess, though I always thought of the "organs" of single-cellular creatures as organelles as they are not made up of "tissue" as they are in multi-cellular organisms.