Milksnake changes published

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John Vanek
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Re: Milksnake changes published

Post by John Vanek »

What makes them not gentilis? Morphology, behavior? What if the morphology is a result of a homoplasy like convergent evolution?
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John Vanek
Posts: 848
Joined: June 19th, 2010, 7:42 pm
Location: New Yawk

Re: Milksnake changes published

Post by John Vanek »

That "biological species concept" has not been lost to the "DNA" crowd, in fact, it works quite well for many species! However, there are often fundamental problems with the BSC, and that is why new concepts are needed.

A classic example is the split between western and eastern meadowlark. They have overlapping ranges, and look nearly identical, but genetics show they do NOT interbreed. Behavioral observations show that the call is slightly different, but that is it. Should we consider them the same species? We didn't know they didn't breed together until some lab experiments showed lack of hybrid viability.

Image

Also, what about ring species?

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"Ring species are species with a geographic distribution that forms a ring and overlaps at the ends. The many subspecies of Ensatina salamanders in California exhibit subtle morphological and genetic differences all along their range. They all interbreed with their immediate neighbors with one exception: where the extreme ends of the range overlap in Southern California, E. klauberi and E. eschscholtzii do not interbreed. So where do we mark the point of speciation?"

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/e ... cept.shtml
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