106
votes
Accepted
How could humans have interbred with Neanderthals if we're a different species?
Short answer
The concept of species is poorly defined and is often misleading. The concepts of lineage and clade / monophyletic group are much more helpful. IMO, the only usefulness of this poorly ...
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20
votes
How could humans have interbred with Neanderthals if we're a different species?
The definition of species is open for debate, and this is especially the case when you try to define it from a paleontology perspective.
Homo neanderthalensis was first discovered and defined in the ...
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When does a virus become a different species?
The general issue of what exactly a "species" is has been addressed numerous times here, in different forms. Some good answers can be found at:
Defining "species" (Are species an ...
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14
votes
How could humans have interbred with Neanderthals if we're a different species?
In addition to @Remi.b's answer on the species concept, and the perils of using human definitions to try to encompass biological reality, you need to understand what "interbreeding" meant to humans ...
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9
votes
Accepted
Living intermediate species?
The hybridization situation you describe could be found in ring species, and is partially related to this concept.
For instance, the three species A, B and C could have partially overlapping ...
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8
votes
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Are there any half-evolved animals alive today?
I know that there are animals that are "simpler" than other animals but are there any that are half-evolved? Why aren't there living half ape and half humans?
Oh come on. You know if ...
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8
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Defining "species" (Are species an emergent property or an ensemble of quantitative differences?)
Can we give a robust definition of species?
No.
Species constantly evolve, diverge, converge, interbreed, and mix and shuffle and trade and spread genes. To draw a box at any particular point in ...
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7
votes
Are all hybrids infertile?
Species definition
The whole problem is based upon your definition of hybrid and therefore your definition of species. If a hybrid is the offspring of two individuals belonging to different species ...
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6
votes
Accepted
Have scientists ever produce a new species in laboratory by means of natural selection?
There are a few issues your question brings up. First, the idea that species evolve from simple to complex is actually not a prediction or inevitable consequence of evolution by natural selection. ...
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6
votes
Is an egg classified based on the species inside it, or by the species that laid it?
Species are generally defined in terms of populations (see e.g. the wikipedia page), and it is therefore relatively meaningless to talk about individuals as species. That species is defined in terms ...
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5
votes
How has the theory of evolution changed over time?
How has the theory of evolution changed over time?
It improved quite a bit. To put things in perspective; today most of evolutionary biology is about evolutionary genetics while at Darwin time (On ...
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4
votes
Living intermediate species?
The term that describes this phenomenon is 'clinal speciation', and the easiest examples to point to are all 'ring species'.
Wikipedia mentions four ring species examples. Three are avian examples (...
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4
votes
Accepted
Can some human groups evolve into new species?
Absolutely it is possible for the current human species to evolve in to two distinct species in the future. Barriers to reproduction, such as physical isolation, help the process along as it allows ...
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4
votes
Can Eskimos be regarded a distinct species from Kalahari Bushmen based on morphological differences & geographic isolation?
I think that species delimitation is not a science, or at least not a coherent one. Different fields use different criteria, for practical or historical reasons. For instance, in plants, loads of ...
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4
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How to produce correct epithet of a species named in the honor of a person?
You should check the article 60 of ICN: http://www.iapt-taxon.org/nomen/main.php?page=art60
See in particular Recommendation 60C about specific epithet, and in the specific case, the rule 60C.1 (...
4
votes
Accepted
Is there any artificial species (in particular, an artificial species of animal)?
Artificial selection leading to new species - Domestication
As you talk about dogs in your intro, let's consider them.
You will fail to breed a great dane and chihuahua for obvious mechanical ...
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4
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Is it tautological that all living humans descended from a single male and single female human ancestor?
The assertion is not tautological because the definition of speciation does not involve single individuals.1
From Wikipedia:
Speciation is the evolutionary process by which populations evolve to ...
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4
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Are genetic crosses between asexual organisms possible?
When it comes to viruses and bacteria, genetic cross is just as a vaguely defined concept as species. The latter is often defined on the percentage of the sequence similarity (for viruses) or the ...
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3
votes
How extensive was interbreeding among human species?
Interbreeding between H. sapiens and neandertalis was quite limited.
Our results indicate that the amount of Neanderthal DNA in living non-Africans can be explained with maximum probability by ...
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3
votes
How many generations does it take for one species to become a new one?
Your question is like asking about the color spectrum. A wavelength of 530nm is green; a wavelength of 580nm is yellow. So let's say it takes 60nm of wavelength change to go from green to yellow. What ...
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Can Eskimos be regarded a distinct species from Kalahari Bushmen based on morphological differences & geographic isolation?
Welcome to the difficult concept called "Species".
Let me ask a simple question are tigers and lions different species?
They look different (Lion is a solid light brown. Tiger is a darker
brown ...
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3
votes
What is the difference between a species tree, a gene tree and a phylogenetic tree?
Phylogenetic tree
A phylogenetic tree is a tree showing relationship between lineages. These lineages might be computed for genome-wide DNA or from only a single gene. As such the term phylogenetic ...
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Why cannot there be multiple sources for same species origins?
References - Wiki article about the theory of multiregional origin for humans. The wiki article clearly states up front that this is "an alternative explanation to the more widely accepted Out of ...
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2
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Genetics of Hybrids
The number of off springs produced by the Generation 0 and 4 is almost the same in case of Hybrids. This indicates that the rate of production in the Hybrids is almost the same among different ...
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How do similar environments on islands in close proximity result in allopatric speciation?
The question is a bit confusing because it seems to be built on at least 5 misunderstandings.
Allopatry and gene flow
[..] allopatric speciation seen in the Galapagos finches. Adaptive radiation ...
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Accepted
New speciations among Darwin's finches
According to oneZoom.org (see the node of interest here), the large ground finch and the large cactus finch share a common ancestor about 170k years ago. Looking among Darwin finches on oneZoom.org, I ...
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2
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Speed of evolution
The video is a simplification of the speciation concept in order to convey principles of evolution using Darwin's finches as an example. Very rapid speciation (obvious speciation in 1000 years or ...
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2
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speciation in a single population
Allopatric speciation
Allopatric speciation [..], also referred to as geographic speciation, vicariant speciation, or its earlier name, the dumbbell model, is a mode of speciation that occurs when ...
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2
votes
How does evolution explain the apparation of different group like: mammals, insects etc
Insects and mammals diverged from one-another over 500 million years ago. For most of Earths 4.5 billion year history, life was single-celled, or organized into colonies of single-celled organisms. ...
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votes
Accepted
What problem does the Dobzhansky-Muller Model resolve?
If reproductive isolation was to be caused by a single mutation, then the first individual to carry this mutation would likely have a very low fitness. At the extreme, in a purely sexually reproducing ...
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Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible