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The brilliant article you post argues against ring species, but it does so by demonstrating geographic breaks that caused... speciation. So perhaps ring species

by Thiez 2y ago

The brilliant article you post argues against ring species, but it does so by demonstrating geographic breaks that caused... speciation. So perhaps ring species as a concept sadly aren't as much a thing as was suggested in my HS days (I suppose science moved on, thanks for updating my knowledge) but if you accept the contents of that article then you must also agree that speciation is a thing that happens. But in the interest of considering the topic from an intellectual and academic point of view, what is your proposed alternative explanation for the huge number of species we see today, apart from evolution and speciation?

jdthedisciple 2y ago
It's a great question you raise, I honestly am extremely curious to learn that myself. I don't know. There are just a few aspects about it that don't fully compute in my mind. Take this for example, and bear with me for a moment: The earth is 4.5b yrs old. Say 4b yrs ago life began. Just in the past 500m yrs, there were 5 major extinction events, with perhaps 80-90% of species going extinct each time on avg. Homo erectus are said to emerge something shy of 2 mio yrs ago. Denisovans are much younger. Us and Denisovans are genetically one species (we could produce viable offspring). The same holds with denisovans and homo erectus This means we could probably viably procreate with homo erecti from ~2 mio yrs ago. So across 2 mio yrs, pretty much no speciation occurred with us (if at all ever, remember that is still conjecture if we're being strict). Now remember the last major extinction was just ~65 mio yrs ago. Yet there are what, 1-2 billion different species alive today? I know there is parallelization involved as the model goes, but to me it seems there was still very little time for all that to happen given that a single speciation event takes millions of years. I'm not saying evolution by speciation is false. I'm just saying perhaps it's insufficient. --- All of that said, speciation - or even evolution and science in general (!) - is not at odds with my religious beliefs anyway, as long as we are being true to what's certain and what's conjecture.

by Thiez 2y ago

jdthedisciple 2y ago

It's a great question you raise, I honestly am extremely curious to learn that myself. I don't know. There are just a few aspects about it that don't fully compute in my mind. Take this for example, and bear with me for a moment: The earth is 4.5b yrs old. Say 4b yrs ago life began. Just in the past 500m yrs, there were 5 major extinction events, with perhaps 80-90% of species going extinct each time on avg. Homo erectus are said to emerge something shy of 2 mio yrs ago. Denisovans are much younger. Us and Denisovans are genetically one species (we could produce viable offspring). The same holds with denisovans and homo erectus This means we could probably viably procreate with homo erecti from ~2 mio yrs ago. So across 2 mio yrs, pretty much no speciation occurred with us (if at all ever, remember that is still conjecture if we're being strict). Now remember the last major extinction was just ~65 mio yrs ago. Yet there are what, 1-2 billion different species alive today? I know there is parallelization involved as the model goes, but to me it seems there was still very little time for all that to happen given that a single speciation event takes millions of years. I'm not saying evolution by speciation is false. I'm just saying perhaps it's insufficient. --- All of that said, speciation - or even evolution and science in general (!) - is not at odds with my religious beliefs anyway, as long as we are being true to what's certain and what's conjecture.