3 ms·

That makes sense thanks. I'm not sure how a mutation that prevents breeding would be disseminated from the animal in which it occurred?

by barking 10y ago

tremon 10y ago
I'm not sure I fully understand your question, but probably this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation The point is that as long as two minimally diverse populations remain in close contact and can interbreed, most of their mutations will cross the population boundary and we will probably classify them as one species, even though both populations may look nothing like their ancestors of 10,000 years earlier. Mutations that prevent interbreeding usually don't occur in a single generation, they are the result of a long period of no interbreeding (and therefore divergent mutations).
- barking 10y ago
  That makes sense to me. Take two groups of animals from one species and put them in different environmental conditions, isolated from the other for long enough (maybe millions of generations?) and eventually you will end up with 2 distinct species.
  - splawn 10y ago
    yes, that is true. However even if you take a single group in one environment and gradually change it over long period of time you can end up with something completely different even though the individual changes were extremely small. Imagine a RGB LED that very slowly goes through the full color spectrum over a year. From day to day the colors would look almost identical to the point that you could swap them and no one would notice. You would probably call all the colors during January "red". Once you got into July you would call the colors "green" and would never be able to swap those hues with their "ancestors" from January. This was a convoluted analogy to explain the concept of "gradual change", but hopefully it makes sense.

3 ms·

That makes sense thanks. I'm not sure how a mutation that prevents breeding would be disseminated from the animal in which it occurred?

by barking 10y ago

That makes sense thanks. I'm not sure how a mutation that prevents breeding would be disseminated from the animal in which it occurred?

tremon 10y ago
I'm not sure I fully understand your question, but probably this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation The point is that as long as two minimally diverse populations remain in close contact and can interbreed, most of their mutations will cross the population boundary and we will probably classify them as one species, even though both populations may look nothing like their ancestors of 10,000 years earlier. Mutations that prevent interbreeding usually don't occur in a single generation, they are the result of a long period of no interbreeding (and therefore divergent mutations).
- barking 10y ago
  That makes sense to me. Take two groups of animals from one species and put them in different environmental conditions, isolated from the other for long enough (maybe millions of generations?) and eventually you will end up with 2 distinct species.
  - splawn 10y ago
    yes, that is true. However even if you take a single group in one environment and gradually change it over long period of time you can end up with something completely different even though the individual changes were extremely small. Imagine a RGB LED that very slowly goes through the full color spectrum over a year. From day to day the colors would look almost identical to the point that you could swap them and no one would notice. You would probably call all the colors during January "red". Once you got into July you would call the colors "green" and would never be able to swap those hues with their "ancestors" from January. This was a convoluted analogy to explain the concept of "gradual change", but hopefully it makes sense.