Common misconceptions of speciation

I saw a reference to this study that was just published and thought other Permies might be interested. It's generally written at a level comfortable for the lay person.

https://academic.oup.com/evolinnean/article/3/1/kzae029/7848478

Christopher -

I'll have to give this paper a read, but the abstract already has my attention.

What constitutes a species is one of those questions which "improves upon acquaintance".

There are ring species in the arctic, in which geographically adjacent sub-species are interfertile (I think that's the correct term?), but more geographically distant species aren't under natural conditions - whether due to behavioral differences (included, but not limited to, mating behaviors) or other considerations.

A lot of cats are cross fertile. But, maybe not all, even under implausibly unnatural laboratory conditions.

Wolves, domestic dogs and coyotes can all produce viable offspring, and I am pretty sure I've seen reference to coyote-dog mixes which implied fertile hybrids.  For sure, timber wolves and domestic dogs can produce fertile offspring.

Grizzlies and polar bears are cross fertile.

Domesticated cattle and American bison are cross fertile.

Critters are the glamorous ones to discuss, but it wouldn't surprise me if there are similar hybridizations possible among taxonomically close plant species, as well.

Thanks for the reference!

Kevin

I love this topic. It so relevant to understanding many issues.

So many people have this idea that species are a hard barrier - species A is not species B, so there can never be mixing. The world is much much messier than that.

Carol Deppe's "breed your own vegetable varieties" explores this a bit. She talks about deliberately seeking out improbably crosses between related species of wild and cultivated plants. Even where the parents have different numbers of chromosomes. The offspring might then be nearly infertile themselves, but may produce just enough pollen to back cross to the cultivated species and so introduce new genes that can be selected from in future generation.

Such events would be exceptionally rare in nature but do a good job of illuminating the "lie" of species.