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I get the impression that no single method (genetics, morphology, ecology, geography, etc.) trumps the others in taxonomy. For example, Homo sapiens and Homo ne
by stvltvs 3y ago
I get the impression that no single method (genetics, morphology, ecology, geography, etc.) trumps the others in taxonomy. For example, Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis interbred successfully and yet are separate species.
- gdprrrr 3y agoI think some consider it a subspecies Homo sapiens neanderthalensis
- BurningFrog 3y agoThere is no clear definition of "species".
- jaggederest 3y agoCladistics can be thought of as k-means clustering in a Hamming space of individual organisms attributes and genetics, I think. A species is a tight cluster, and as you go up towards phyla the clustering becomes more diffuse.
- BurningFrog 3y agoThat's a definition. I'm not convinced it's "clear" :)
- dekhn 3y agoit's not even a definition, it's a heuristic approximation. Likely the concept of species can't really be truly defined, but works best as a loose concept for organizing thinking about evolution.
- jhbadger 3y agoThat's more phenetics (clustering by shared similarities) than cladistics. Cladistics needs a hypothesis of shared ancestry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cladistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cladistics