On speciation 26 Jun 200922 Jun 2018 The Atavism has some thoughts on speciation in response to a high school teacher’s query. He uses the following nice diagram to indicate what some of the core species definitions mean: It’s neat, and therefore… wrong. By which I mean that given the rule that biological organisms do what they damned well please, sometimes speciation will not involve allele frequency change (but rather reorganisation of the same alleles), and sometimes the new species won’t occupy a distinct niche, and sometimes hybrids remain viable, and sometimes different species do not have “monophyletic DNA” (which I take to be the claim that some of the DNA is unique to that species). Life is unkind … to taxonomists. Ecology and Biodiversity Evolution Humor Species and systematics Systematics
Evolution Sarkar slams Stein, while Kimbo kicks arse… 20 Apr 2008 Biologist and philosopher Sahotra Sarkar is combative, to say the least. When he says what he means, it can hurt physically if you are the target. I almost feel sympathy for Ben Stein… And knowing one of the principals in this comment, I had to laugh. When Kimbo says he… Read More
Administrative Month first line meme 6 Dec 200818 Sep 2017 Bora made me do it… first line of the first post of each month the year. It doesn’t quite read like a dadaist poem. January: OK, so the next door party finished about 1.30, but the family disputes finished about 5 am, so instead of thinking, I’m going to let… Read More
Hi John, You are of course right. I should have been more explicit that this is an example of what might happen in one case not ‘the one true path to speciation’ – if you find a universal truth in biology you are almost certainly wrong 😉 The idea was to highlight De Queiroz’s ideas about species concepts as species delimination concepts. (And yes “monophyletic DNA” was my shorthand for species having completely sorted lineages for at least one gene)
Don’t get me wrong – I like the diagram. I was just making a passing observation. It has to do with essentialist definitions failing in biology.
I strongly recommend Speciation By Jerry A. Coyne, H. Allen Orr. It will provide a more technical discussion of the various ways that it can happen, along with some aspects of the way the word means different things in different contexts, and really nothing at all when you look to closely.