20
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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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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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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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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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5
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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
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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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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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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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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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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 (...
3
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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
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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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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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The split in Boroeutheria into Euarchontoglires and Laurasiatheria. Was this due to the opening up of the Atlantic Ocean?
It would seem the answer is "No" at the current understanding of this issue.
You should understand that this is a very complex topic, which is based on both molecular (i.e. DNA sequences or ...
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2
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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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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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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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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
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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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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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2
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What "most closely related to" means in phylogenetic trees?
Phylogenies are an attempt to answer precisely the question of what things are most similar, where "similar" can mean one of a number of things. In statistical terms, a phylogeny is a ...
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What is the meaning of 'primary' and 'secondary' sympatric speciation in this paper?
TLDR
Sympatric speciation and allopatric speciation with later migration into the same habitat were historically diffucult to distinguish without looking at palaeo-biological data. The paper argues ...
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How does evolution explain the apparation of different group like: mammals, insects etc
Re a fly evolving into a rabbit, theoretically yes, practically no. Insects (and invertebrates in general) made some evolutionary "choices" like having an exoskeleton & breathing through trachea ...
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How does evolution explain the apparation of different group like: mammals, insects etc
The two groups that you mention belong to two separated branches in the animal kingdom. The fly and all insects are protostomes and the rabbit and all mammals are deuterostomes. In the first, the ...
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Is evolution theory falsifiable by whether mutations result in a loss or gain of genetic information?
This might not have a purely objective answer. For example:
Most people lose the ability to digest milk by their teens. A few thousand years ago, however, after the domestication of cattle, several ...
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Book on the history of Darwin's discoveries and development of his theory
I'm not certain it fills every element of your question, but I really enjoyed Michael Ruse's "The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw."
It's especially good for setting up the ...
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Time taken for species to become endemic
From wikipedia > endemism:
Endemism is the ecological state of a species being unique to a defined geographic location, such as an island, nation, country or other defined zone, or habitat type.
...
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Spider identification please
It think this spider is a Tegenaria domestica also known as the barn funnel weaver in North America and the domestic house spider in Europe. See here or here (picture taken from the first link):
They ...
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Practical Question about Evolution, Population Genetics and Speciation
Infertile descendants indeed sound like a disadvantage. Individual must invest a fair amount of resources into making an offspring. Making sterile offspring is just a waste of resources as those ...
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