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Is there any species, other than humans, that is found all across the globe (i.e. geographically separated), and has not differentiated into subspecies? Wolves,
by like_any_other 6mo ago
Is there any species, other than humans, that is found all across the globe (i.e. geographically separated), and has not differentiated into subspecies? Wolves, elephants, tigers, bears, and foxes have all been categorized into multiple subspecies each, distinct but able to interbreed.
- meroes 6mo agoDogs?
- paulryanrogers 6mo agoAren't dogs technically one species?
- hooo 6mo agoThis distinction seems more arbitrary over time. Growing up I was taught different species couldn’t interbreed. But what about Neanderthal and Sapiens?
- chrisweekly 6mo agoFunny tangent: this comic has strong feelings about such distinctions, using "dog" as the canonical example: https://youtu.be/dNLLXZgN4Mc?si=SUhHZ2uzMZ7jgejI https://youtu.be/dNLLXZgN4Mc?si=SUhHZ2uzMZ7jgejI
- like_any_other 6mo agoI don't think you could have chosen a worse example. Dogs are themselves a subspecies, and are split into many different breeds, of wildly different character and physiology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog#Taxonomy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog#Taxonomy
- idiotsecant 6mo agoBreeds and species are different things. Parent post is making a (very good) point that dogs can pretty much all breed with one another.
- erichocean 6mo agoHumans have, obviously. Just interbreeding with ancient species was enough to do it, even without separate evolution.
- greazy 6mo agoThe definition of what constitutes a species is a human construct. Two bird populations living in the same locale but divided by a mountain range therefore not naturally breeding with each other would classify as a different species, even if they could breed with each other. So your question is hard to answer.
- nelox 6mo agoI’ve often dreamt of breeding with that mythical bird far, far away.
- greazy 6mo agoIf you do cross the barrier, you could successfully mate with that mythical bird!
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- John7878781 6mo ago> Two bird populations living in the same locale but divided by a mountain range therefore not naturally breeding with each other would classify as a different species, even if they could breed with each other. Really? I thought the requirements for species classification were: (1) must be able to reproduce and (2) offspring must be fertile. Is it less objective than that?
- Archelaos 6mo agoPolar bears can have furtile offspring with grizzly/brown bears. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grizzly%E2%80%93polar_bear_hybrid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grizzly%E2%80%93polar_bear_hyb...
- rolph 6mo agothe reproductive incompatability, is based on physiological range. in general, there are multi organizational levels of reproductive incompatability. in this case, the geographic distance, orogenic blockade, and ecological confounds of arctic conditions preclude easy mingling of U.arctos x U. maritimus.
- renewiltord 6mo agoThey have to be. The snail darter is genetically identical to another animal and is a separate species. Most likely different humans are as well.
- yabutlivnWoods 6mo ago> ...distinct but able to interbreed I mean people won't like the idea but that's not my point; what you describe variety in superficial traits while maintaining common traits Applied to humans; skin color, eyes, dwarfism, hypertrichosis... can still interbreed When it comes to categorization and taxonomy in leaky abstractions like languages the boundaries get a bit hand wavy and usually land on whatever fits the prevailing social desirability bias of the day
- like_any_other 6mo ago> you describe variety in superficial traits The same selection pressures that produced the variety of "superficial" traits also act on "non-superficial" traits - nature does not recognize this distinction.
- yabutlivnWoods 6mo agoYou cherry picked one idea from my post. I was not addressing nature but human social tropes. What is a subspecies and species is random gibberish of the living humans
- api 6mo agoNot many. Part of why we are like this is extreme mobility. Even before modern times we were always good at getting around and seem to have a desire to roam. Or at least enough of us do to mix up those gene pools.
- like_any_other 6mo agoIf that were true before modern times, distinctions in appearance never could have developed. Edit as reply because "pOsTiNg tOo FaSt": > Before modern times there was enough mixing to keep speciation from occurring but not enough to fully homogenize. I see. Is there some quantitative genetic similarity measure, by which it was determined that it was worth categorizing foxes and wolves and bears into distinct subspecies/breeds/whatever taxonomical categories, but not humans? I assume that's what your "speciation did not occur [enough to merit taxonomical distinction]" is based on. I.e. by what measure are a Pygmy and a Norwegian more similar than a Sumatran and a Siberian tiger [1]? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47812581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47812581
- api 6mo agoIt’s not binary. Before modern times there was enough mixing to keep speciation from occurring but not enough to fully homogenize. If our modern world continues for thousands of years eventually our differences will start to dissolve.
- showerst 6mo agoHow about Taraxacum officinale, the common dandelion? It’s not quite all across the globe but pretty close, and is so adapted that it is not considered invasive any more in most places.
- chrisweekly 6mo agoOr, it's equally invasive everywhere.
- redsocksfan45 6mo ago[dead]
- cwmoore 6mo agoLol everywhere there are manicured lawns?
- cwmoore 6mo agoSome did not get the joke.
- SloppyDrive 6mo agoWe dont categorize humans that way; not because humans are different but because of cultural norms. The generous idea is that "subspecies" does not provide an anthropologist a useful lens to look at humanity, therefore we do not classify. The alternative is that "subspecies" is too close to "race" for scientists, publishers, and funding bodies to touch, so its deliberately ignored.
- verisimi 6mo agoI agree - cultural educating trumps scientific definitions.
- vjjsejj 6mo agoIt’s not like those scientific definitions are particularly consistent or stable, though. In a large part it’s still a matter of convention when it comes to non human species as well
- vintermann 6mo agoScience, or you, can make up whatever definitions they wish. The question is not if a definition is "true", but what it's useful for. Sure, you - or scientific authorities, whoever they might be - can declare that there are multiple modern human species. The question is, what are you intending to use that definition for? That applies to other branches of the tree of life, too. There's not some objective genetic distance measure which says what's a species and what is not. It can vary widely on different parts of the tree. But it's driven by pragmatism - sensible biologists will not waste time arguing whether some mushrooms should be one species or two, if they otherwise agree on the facts. If you can't say plainly and clearly what the purpose of your delineation is, and it's in your own part of the tree, of course people are going to have their suspicions.
- scotty79 6mo agoI think cultural norms enforced over generations can lead to altered genetic variability.
- IncreasePosts 6mo agoDo humans not fit the standards for being broken into multiple subspecies? I assumed that they would but "the science community" is too scared of the implications when idiots learn about it. I look at a sumatran tiger and a Siberian tiger and I see a lot less variance than I see when I look at a pygmy, a Norwegian, an sentinel islander, and a han Chinese person
- krapp 6mo ago>Do humans not fit the standards for being broken into multiple subspecies? No. Multiple human subspecies did once exist (examples being Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo Erectus, and Homo Floresiensis) but only our species, Homo Sapiens, remains (with traces of Neanderthal DNA so there was some interbreeding.) However race is a cultural and social construct. Different human races are not different human subspecies. A Pygmy, a Norwegian, a Sentinel Islander, and a Han Chinese person are all the same species. The superficial variations in average height, skin color, etc. do not vary enough to constitute species differentiation - humans share 99.9% of their DNA, and the vast majority of genetic variation exists within populations (in other words, within "races") and not between them.
- MrBuddyCasino 6mo agoBut the DNA of the sumatran tiger and a Siberian tiger is also over 99% identical?
- beloch 6mo agoThe DNA of humans and chimps is 98.8% identical. The percent difference between genomes of species is one of those tricky measures that doesn't really give good intuition. I find it much more useful to think in terms of the time since two species shared a common ancestor. e.g. For humans and chimps, that's several million years. For Sumatran and Siberian tigers, it's around a hundred thousand years.
- IncreasePosts 6mo ago
- samsartor 6mo agoMy understanding is that humans have very limited genetic diversity compared to most other animals, because of the population bottlenecks we've been through. And further, that diversity is mostly between individuals, not between groups. The distinction is easy to see in cats vs dogs: they both have similar overall genetic diversity but two Chihuahuas have virtually all the same genes (the small angry ones) while two tabby cats are more distinct. The two cats have different combinations of big/small nice/mean smart/dumb, but the genes average out to the same "typical" kind of cat in both cases. Because humans get around so much, and because we think interesting-looking people are hot, the diversity is spread pretty broadly across the whole population. The average european person and the average east asian person are a little bit different genetically, but way less different than any two real europeans or two east-asians are to one another. In short, the distributions of individuals overlap so much that the trendlines are pretty close to useless. And historically speaking, the people who tried to make a hard distinction out of those trendlines had awful motives.
- ralfd 6mo ago> The average european person and the average east asian person are a little bit different genetically, but way less different than any two real europeans or two east-asians are to one another. This is always touted as an “racism-is-not-only-immoral-it-is-scientifically-wrong” argument, but it is a fallacy. Example: The average height (a trait with very high heritability) of Dutch men is 6’0 feet (183 cm) and the average height of Philippine men is 5’4 (163 cm). This means the height difference between these two groups is 20 cm. And it is obvious that the difference inside one group MUST be larger, for example there are 6’4 Dutch basketballers but also certainly Dutch 5’2 horse riding jockeys. And depending on context both of these insights are useful. For example if you manage a basketball team it is much more effective to consider people as individuals, simplified you should hire very tall people (regardless if they are Dutch or Philippines) who can throw precisely a ball into a basket. But the diversity between population groups points to real information too! If you sell shoes to both countries you shouldn’t provide the same one-size-fits-all and assume to catch the same percentage of the market. Plus the overlap in one metric is expanding into separable clusters the more dimensions are used: https://i.sstatic.net/r6cWd.jpg https://i.sstatic.net/r6cWd.jpg Take a Dutch and Philippine who have the exact same height: Their own respective brothers (heck, even twins) will not be the same perfect match, instead being a bit taller or smaller. But the more variables you consider (weight, muscle composition, leg length, head radius, hand size, form of earlobe .. etc) you will find that holistically seen two brothers truly are much more similar to each other than to a stranger.
- abc123abc123 6mo agoSo have humans. There are white, red, black, brown, yellow people, and they live in their own happy places on the planet, except for the fact that we now move them around by plane, boat and goat.
- liveoneggs 6mo agoI think subspecies is: "doesn't generally interbreed" and "generally lives apart"
- throwup238 6mo agoMany researchers now refer to neanderthals as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, a subspecies of modern humans. It doesn’t get talked about much because it’s a sideshow without an easy resolution, but the question of modern and archaic human speciation is far from a settled problem and many of the species formerly considered to be separate are now often lumped in as subspecies.
- summa_tech 6mo agoFirst, I like your username. Second, I think it may be a problem of ebb and flow of scientific discourse (shifts in how we apply the definition of species) more than reflecting underlying reality, which - as you said - has no easy resolution.
- throwup238 6mo agoIt’s not the ebb and flow so much as avoiding pointless academic bikeshedding. A bunch of very competitive explorer archaeologists named the separate species based on morphological skeletal differences decades before we even knew about DNA and now as the evidence accumulates, the question has gone from hard facts to a debate what is a species vs subspecies. Nobody really cares about the latter because it makes no functional difference to the research, so they let the problem lie until new interesting evidence presents itself. We know the species could interbreed, which is what matters to us now, not whether their taxa is three words or two (which is what this boils down to, some people write one way, some people the other and both know what each other is saying)
- usrnm 6mo ago> now refer to neanderthals as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis What do you mean "now", they definitely were called that 30 years ago, when I first learned about them