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New Estimate Suggests 5.5M Species On Earth, Not 30-100M
An anonymous reader writes "How many species share our planet? According to a recalculation by an international research team, the number is significantly lower than we thought — only around 5.5 million."
We have a lot less work ahead of us that originally anticipated. Only 5.499999 million to go!
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
after we've killed off a bunch of them.
I count 0, 1, 10, 11...
Each more delicious than the last!
Hmm... maybe I should have had breakfast this morning...
crazy dynamite monkey
I count I, II, III, IV, V...
Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
"... very single beetle with a slightly different coloration OBVIOUSLY counts as a new species ..."
Why obviously? The only definition of a species is that two organisms that cannot mate are, by definition, different species.
America, Home of the Brave.
I count 0, 1, 10, 11...
I think a bragr won the nerd bragging contest...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
the Nanites and the self-aware computers finally hit their stride.
London, England. Today BP Chairman Johan Georing declared responsibilty for the recently discovered mass extinction of species on Planet Earth. "With 10 to 15 million down," Georing said, "we only have four or five million more to go. And just look how well we seem to be doing this month."
There's a reason that nobody bothered to classify all those bugs in the amazon... who cares. As long as swatting them kills them, a bug is a bug.
Unless it secretes the cure for cancer or something, it's just not a big deal.
I care more about the species that are very unlike average life. those are the interesting ones. the stuff that lives on ocean floor heat vents, or generate their own light sources, etc.
also, 5.5 million is still a lot of anything.
I count 0, 1, 11, 10, 110, 111...
My gears don't wear out as fast as yours.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"... very single beetle with a slightly different coloration OBVIOUSLY counts as a new species ..."
Why obviously? The only definition of a species is that two organisms that cannot mate are, by definition, different species.
So by that definition, How many species of mules are out there?
So they say there are 5.5 million species on earth and the World Resources Institute Says 100 species are going extinct every day!
So, by 2160 every species on earth will be extinct. Sounds good to me, lets eat!
It is obviously another propaganda attempt by the biodiversity denialists who are funded by the Big Zoo industry.
I count 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11 ...
What are all other numbers but a combination of primes?
Consider switching to unary - you'll only have to backspace once each time.
FTA:
By looking at all of the beetles that live on a single tree species in Papua New Guinea, the researchers were able to extrapolate their numbers to a global scale.
No, they thought they could extrapolate their numbers to a global scale. Luckily, they used only the most rigourous methods...
This type of model is widely used in financial risk assessments, but has rarely been applied to ecology.
Well perhaps not the most rigourous, more likely that type of model has never been applied to reality, but I digress. This smells like bullshit science and shouldn't be leant much credibility.
Actually, being tasty to humans is one of the most advantageous adaptations a species can have. Well, either the best or the worst, depending on if we raise them or unsustainably collect them from the wild until the population collapses. You don't see cows or chickens or apples or oranges in any danger any time soon, but then again, things have been eaten to extinction. I don't think it's too bad of an idea to, where possible, try to introduce cultivated or farmed endangered species into the food supply. Preservation through consumption.
1.
Mules cannot mate because they are sterile, not because they have incompatible genes.
America, Home of the Brave.
Decimals, fractions, complex numbers..
which is totally what she said
The notion of interbreeding as the sole definition of species is simply wrong. Even where fertile hybrids are produced, as with brown bears and polar bears, it's still not enough to warrant declaring them the same species. There are a number of factors that go into determining when two populations are members of the same species or not, and producing fertile and fit offspring is only one of them.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
...despite what you were told in school, the definition of "species" has become considerably fuzzier than "can mate". It is not a cut-and-dried designation at all anymore, which obviously complicates counting the total number of species on the planet.
This source includes discussion on what counts as a species.
There's a reason that nobody bothered to classify all those bugs in the amazon... who cares. As long as swatting them kills them, a bug is a bug.
Unless it secretes the cure for cancer or something, it's just not a big deal.
However the bug you've just killed might just happen to be the sole pollinator of a plant that is a cure for cancer. You just don't know until you've studied them.
Which obviously could not be the case. This is the same sort of erroneous statistics that lead to creationist "proofs" that the world is only 4,000/6,000/10,000 years old by assuming that the current human population growth rate is exactly the same as it has been throughout history and counting backwards.
I would certainly like to know how we'd end up with a fraction of a species
Subspecies?
"The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games." - Eugene Jarvis
But 1 is not a prime number
4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3...
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
Wow... The headline is more informative than the summary. And it's not even misleading (only the actual story is)! *thumbs up @ slashdot*
Yes, it's sarcasm. Deal with it!
so you count 0,1,3,2,6,7?
All your 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 are belong to us
Or just use ^W instead of ^H a bunch of times
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
So in your mind species only die? Speciation happens all the time. New species are developing to fill new niches created by environmental changes, as it has always happened. Regardless of mass extinctions in (relatively) short periods, in fact arguably because of mass extinctions, the number of species over geologic time has always increased, and the rate of speciation has always increased. There are/were more species in the Holocene than any other period. If we lose a few we might, what, end up in a biosphere more like the Pleistocene? Who cares? We lived back then too. Species we relied on in that period went extinct during climate changes that reached their zenith during the Holocene Climate Optimum, yet somehow everything seems to carry on without the mammoth. If we can live in the Holocene without species from the Pleistocene, chances are better than average that we can live fine in the post-Holocene without species from today, yesterday, or tomorrow.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Do slashdotters count as a single different species or are each of us a species unto ourselves?
I drank what? -- Socrates
Well... "Two organisms that cannot produce fertile offspring are separate species" would probably be more accurate. Otherwise you would be lumping tigers and lions into the same species. And the reverse is not true, just because two species can produce fertile offspring doesn't mean they are the same species. For example, polar bears are able to breed with brown bears, false killer whales can create fertile offspring with bottle nosed dolphins; not to mention the countless plant hybrids that are possible.
Please turn in your geek badge at the door. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_code
So man and donkey are the same species?
in the submitted blurb that it's because they didn't include bacteria in this study.
Yes, they removed a whole group and then the number was less..I'm shocked it tell you, Shocked!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually, that's not too bad of a premise. The sad part is, is farming many types of foods is prohibitively expensive. And some just don't/won't grow in a non-natural environment. It would be nice to have more awareness of different foods, and farm ability. I personally think that a lot of farmed foods simply aren't as tasty as their wild cousins. Then again, sometimes it's just what you want.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
I count ...
1
1A
10
11
1AA
1A0
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
at that point... to zero.
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
Yes, you do -- at least, subspecies (or varieties) of cows, chickens, oranges or apples.
For example, there used to be different kinds of apples grown in different regions of the UK. Now, most apples are one of a few varieties that work very well commercially. There are some efforts to introduce other varieties, I'm not sure how successful it's been.
50% of our food comes from three species (wheat, rice, maize). Another 40% (45%? I can't remember) comes from about 30 more species, but in total 30,000 species are eaten.
Purely for self-preservation (food, medicine), we need to keep as much biodiversity around as possible.
But what definition of species does this estimate use? It may seem odd, but there really isn't a scientific consensus of how to define a "species". That's not to say there aren't strong opinions out there, but it tends to vary from field to field depending on what questions a particular group of biologists is trying to answer. When you actually dig down and look carefully, there are shades of gray and blurring of lines all over the place (as would be expected for a world that is constantly evolving - there's no clear day on which one species becomes two).
(If you're trying to count species from the point of view of a billionaire with a Pokemon mindset, you're going to be disappointed because there will never have a perfect checklist for you to collect)
Good thing he has 11 of them!
If he had missed out 1, his statement would have been incorrect. He never said they were all prime, just that all other numbers were a combination of primes.
Isn't it a little assuming to count things we haven't found yet? I don't see anything about whether this is known species or just an arbitrary made up number of what scientists haven't seen yet. Might as well add God and the Loch Ness Monster to the list.
Well... "Two organisms that cannot produce fertile offspring are separate species" would probably be more accurate. Otherwise you would be lumping tigers and lions into the same species. And the reverse is not true, just because two species can produce fertile offspring doesn't mean they are the same species.
Yeah, the "can they produce fertile offspring" test is really only a way that lets you say that two populations (not organisms, I mean most of the time two males of the same species can't breed :P) are definitely different species. The definition of "species" is way too fuzzy to easily say that things which can breed are the same species.
The enemies of Democracy are
Let me see if I understand their methods. If we take some sort of statistical sample with trees common to the deserts in Africa (let's say two Beatles named Ringo and Paul live in all of them), we can also determine the number of species on Earth? What happens if we pick a tree species where no Beatles or any species lives? Hell, what if we start with a desert with no trees or life at all? How about the poles? How many Beatles live in them apple trees?
The statistical likelihood of BS seems very high.
Living in Chile
Only 3 more species and I'll have tasted them all!!!
The study doesn't take into account bacteria, archaea nor unicellular eukaryotes. That's where by far most of biodiversity (species count and number of genes and metabolic pathways) and biomass (carbon and nutrients) lie. Typical macroworld arrogance :(
Ya got me there. Never heard of gray code, but I see what it is now; its used for karnaugh map numbering and all. My professor always said we numbered that way to allow for easier identification if implicants, but never told us it had a name.
I stand corrected
All your 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 are belong to us
Some alternate headlines:
New estimate suggests 5.5M species on Earth, not 5.4M
New estimate suggests 5.5M species on Earth, not 5-10
New estimate suggests 5.5M species on Earth, not 1M (also not 1.1M, nor 1.2M, nor 1.3M)
I mean really, all that changed here was our estimate. The number of species didn't suddenly change; this revision of estimate didn't suddenly eliminate 24M+ species.
I'm not saying the researchers didn't do their homework, but for something of this gravity, I would have expected Science or Nature to pick it up, not American Naturalist. Not that American Naturalist is a bad journal, but its certainly easier to get a paper in there than other journals (even Ecology, if I'm not mistaken). In light of that, I'm a bit skeptical of their claims.
Per Square Mile, a blog about density
They can try to mate, though it is usually frowned upon. I'm led to believe they wouldn't produce any offspring. Though there was this girl I once woke up beside after some heavy drinking that casts a doubt on that assertion.
The vast majority of named species is animal with over 1.25 million named, if there isn't as many plant and fungi as animals I would be extremely surprised.
And what about manbearpig?
Is it just one specie? Or does it count like three? Or maybe not at all since it's not for real?
Mules most certainly can mate, and occasionally the female versions get pregnant and have foals. The usual fertility issues with horse/donkey mules are because they have an odd number of genes (63) rather than 62 (donkeys) or 64 (horses) which results in difficulties pairing up genetic material. At least that's what Wikipedia tells me. Would Jamie Wailes lie to me? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
It's largely a matter of convention. Wolves hybridize with coyotes to produce viable offspring ... but the two species are genetically, behaviorally and ecologically distinct (in most places) so it seems reasonable to treat them as different species.
Insect species are often split based on tiny morphological details, even where the two populations hybridize. Other times they are organized into "subspecies", or species within a genus are organized into "subgenera".
What might make more sense is some kind of measure of genetic entropy. That would also count low species diversity, as in cases of species that pass through genetic bottlenecks (e.g. cheetahs), and so which represent a less stable population.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I was responding to "What are all other numbers but a combination of primes?". Of course depending on the meaning of "combination" you could also use prime integers to make numbers in those other systems.
which is totally what she said
How many species share our planet? According to a recalculation by an international research team, the number is significantly lower than we thought - only around 5.5 million...
Cue the science deniers in 3...2...1...
...breathlessly observing that, "Once again, science has proven that it can't be trusted..."
From 100M+ to 5.5M? We sure are killing them off fast...
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
They did this last count *after* the oil spill. gee thanks, BP!
blah blah blah
Disclaimer: I'm not trying to discredit the dangers of biodiversity loss, but I have real trouble assigning any real meaning to the notion of "millions of species", and I don't think that those numbers are doing much to win over eco-skeptics either. The real issue to me seems to be overall genetic diversity and the need to preserve it; how many "species" you pigeonhole that diversity into has very little practical relevance and is probably impossible to do properly anyway.
Toche
The only definition of a species is that two organisms that cannot mate are, by definition, different species.
So, Slashdotters and supermodels are of two different species?
Have gnu, will travel.
Many of those varieties were created by cultivation itself. To start worrying about 'endangered varieties' now borders on insane.
Natural selection and manual selection both have huge limitations. Human self-preservation going forward is not likely hinge significantly on either one when we are now facing the dawn of genetic engineering.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
They did not "remove a whole group". The previous estimates of 30 to 100 million species also did not include bacteria.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Your humility is not welcome here. :p
Remember to maintain your supply of
We need to move beyond the witch doctor mindset that every medicine is going to be refined from some coincidental protein production in some rare exotic plant somewhere. Once we understand our own cellular genetics well enough, we will be able to use synthetic life to further synthesize specific proteins and compounds necessary to solve diseases and disorders, not to mention gene therapies of our cells themselves.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
There are 10 kinds of people: Those who understand Gray code, those who don't, and those who mistake it for binary.
The only definition of a species is that two organisms that cannot mate are, by definition, different species.
To illustrate the subtleties in the actual definition(s) used by biologists, a prof in a class I was in wrote a definition very much like the above, and asked the class "What's wrong with this definition?" He was impressed when I spoke up and said "According to that definition, you and I are not the same species." We were (and probably still are ;-) both male, so he just grinned and said "Ya got it." Funny thing was that a good percentage of the class still had a puzzled looks on their faces, so he had to explain to them what I'd just said.
He later mentioned that there are other important problems with such definitions. One is that people generally want "the same X as" to be a transitive relation. But Ma Nature throws monkey wrenches into such things. Thus, the domestic dog Canis familiaris can interbreed with wild wolves and jackals, but wolves and jackals can't interbreed (or rather, they can, but the few offspring are sterile). So dogs are the same species as wolves and jackals, but wolves and jackals are different species. There are many examples like this.
A more subtle sort of example is what are sometimes called "range species", in which matings of critters not too far apart are fertile, but when the distance gets above some threshold, fertile hybrids are no longer possible. This happens in a lot of shoreline species.
We've had a couple of centuries to work out such ideas, and biologists have been fairly successful at dealing with this fairly important concept. But you need more carefully worded definitions than the above.
If you want to read about an especially difficult "species" distinction, google for the results of mating lions with tigers. That should convince anyone how tricky it is to get the definition right.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I'm much, much more interested in preserving species biodiversity. It's not in my job description, but it is in plenty of my colleagues'!
I am interested in keeping food plant varieties though -- not from a science/ecology point of view, but in opposition to the mass-produced uniform everything that the supermarkets sell. However, I don't do anything about it beyond buying [products with] less-commercially successful ingredients.
I would like to participate in the study to find out. I will graciously accept the burden of attempting to mate with a supermodel and see if we can produce offspring.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
I have to kind of disagree there. While it is true that they are not species in and of themselves, there are no small number of such varieties with unique genes due to being selected from a different population of wild stock or selecting from some mutation or something. This could result in a unique flavor or a useful trait (like flood resistant rice or disease resistant bananas), or just some other neat thing, like red fleshed apples, yellow kiwis, white blackberries, pink blueberries, or orange watermelons. A diverse genetic population is a good thing, and only cultivating a small number of those is limiting, and besides, not very fun. As for genetic engineering, damn strait. One of these days we'll just be able to coalesce the most beneficial genes from the older varieties and with other ones and make it kind of a moot point, except for subjective things like flavor (for example, the flavor of Court Pendu Plat vs Red Delicious) and historical genetic preservation purposes.
Actually the big problem is that researchers can't agree on a definition for species. Different organisms have different usable definitions of species. For example, bacteria don't mate but they surely have more than one species. Similarly, a chihuahua and a great dane can't naturally mate due to the massive difference in size but they can produce offspring so where does that leave them?
I think that a better approach, rather than opposing the mass produced aspect, would be to advocate the integration of more variety into the large scale growing. The system isn't broke; it's just flawed. I mean, if someone starts producing large scale industrial farm quantities of, say, Orangeglo watermelon, Purple of Sicily cauliflower, or Ananas Noire tomato, or a less cultivated species like mulberry, oca, Jerusalem artichoke, or pindaíba, well, I say great. I too buy things if they have a less used ingredient in them (like juices with a minute amount of camu-camu or prickly pear in them), and I think doing that, encouraging other species to be mass produced, buying new things when they show up in the produce aisle (lychees & persimmons ftw!) is better than simply opposing the mass production.
I just discovered an undocumented new species! The basement-dwelling slashdot geek nerd.
wake up and hold your nose
Is that the number of *known* species? If so, obviously someone should just total them up, no guessing needed.
Of course, since this is about the *actual* species, many of which are apparently either unrecognized, uncataloged, or just plain unknown, then this number is plain made up too.
Woo. I'm impressed. No wonder people don't believe Science. It's too much guessing disguised as knowledge.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It's also used in a lot of those "move a bunch of pieces to solve" puzzles. that's where I first encountered it.
1 is a unit.
units are not prime.
1 is not prime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_(ring_theory)
We're like mules, same species, just practically incapable of reproduction.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Yeah, the "can they produce fertile offspring" test is really only a way that lets you say that two populations [...] are definitely different species. The definition of "species" is way too fuzzy to easily say that things which can breed are the same species.
Nope, there are lots of definitions of species, not just that one (which fails on ring species).
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
The Encyclopedia of Life (http://www.eol.org/) is aggregating much of the known scientific information about life on earth with a species page for every described species. I believe there is a placeholder for at least 1.4 million species but this will surely grow as new species are discovered and described.
Indeed, 0.45 = (43+2) / (97+3)
It varies, but here in the UK many of the mass produced fruits and vegetables are pretty tasteless -- they're bred to look colourful, large, uniform, etc, and sometimes they're artificially ripened. Taste is secondary. If you want fruit and vegetables that actually taste of something you have to buy the "organic" ones -- presumably people buying these don't mind that the fruits are all slightly different sizes.
Last time I went to France I was shopping with a friend's 22yo wife (also from the UK). She wouldn't buy the "funny" French vegetables, which were "knobbly and had soil on them". I bought them anyway, and they tasted like the ones my parents grow in their garden/greenhouse.
Nope, there are lots of definitions of species, not just that one (which fails on ring species).
Uh, my whole point was that having a criterion to say that two populations are not the same species is not the same as defining "species" which is much more difficult. I can say that if you lack a spine you're not a mammal, but that's not the definition of mammal, nor is it the only criterion by which you could be said to not be one.
And as a criterion it works just fine for ring species; if the populations at the ends of the ring can't interbreed, they aren't the same species. The fuzzy relationships with neighboring populations is only a problem if you assume species relationships are commutative. But biological compatibility is not by nature commutative, so neither should you expect species relationships to be.
The enemies of Democracy are
Lol, I meant *transitive* of course, not commutative. But seeing as you can different results breeding A and B depending on if A or B is the mother, commutative should probably not be assumed either!
The enemies of Democracy are
And as a criterion it works just fine for ring species; if the populations at the ends of the ring can't interbreed, they aren't the same species. The fuzzy relationships with neighboring populations is only a problem if you assume species relationships are commutative. But biological compatibility is not by nature commutative, so neither should you expect species relationships to be.
Maybe not, but if the species relationship is not transitive (I assume that's what you meant) how do you count them?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Just yesterday I was calculating some stuff and noticed that when I pressed the 'pi' button on my calculator I got 3.14159 instead of the never-ending irrational number. Same for 'e'. (Well, different numbers, but "not the never-ending irrational" part.)
I'm wondering the same thing myself -- it seems that the only way you can get millions of beetle species is by counting minor differences between them as a different species. Yet as the history of dog breeding shows, two very very different looking organisms can be the same species, capable of mating and everything. I have no doubt that somewhere, two kinds of beetles have been called different species, though they differ as much as a poodle and a great dane, and have never been tested for interbreeding capability.
Heck, I've even heard about this problem for bigger animals, like when a species has subpopulations that geographically separate and then get called two species just because of the different geography: now we have the North Elbonian wumpus and South Elbonian wumpus. Can they interbreed? Who cares anymore, if we can stir up concern about an extinction?
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Um, so you're saying that because it is invertible in a structure's multiplicative monoid, that it is not a prime? That doesn't follow. The reason we mathematicians decided to make 1 a special case among primes, and say it isn't one, is to make the expressing the prime number theorem easy, in terms of unique factorizations, instead of unique factorizations modulo factorizations including 1.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Maybe not, but if the species relationship is not transitive (I assume that's what you meant) how do you count them?
Heh, yeah, it is.
Anyway, actually counting the species requires you to define what species means, taking into account all the complexities like non-transitivity, which is much trickier and not the problem I'm trying to solve. I'm just suggesting a criterion for saying two things are definitely *not* the same. It's not very useful for counting species in a ring, since all it can say is "at least two".
The classic example described on WP, the gulls surrounding the arctic circle, consists of at least five species. On the other hand, the Greenish Warblers are classified taxonomically as a single species with a number of sub-species. That kind of thing changes all the time, though. For example, the Tufted Titmouse and Black-crested Titmouse used to be considered separate species, then they decided to classify them as the same species, then they decided to separate them again.
The enemies of Democracy are
I count 1,2,4,5... for there is the number I never mention except to explode the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.
Nice twist on an old geek joke!
There are some decimals that can't be created by fractions though, so it would take quite a bit of work to contrive ones to many significant places :p
which is totally what she said
In the long term, being useful to humans is probably detrimental. For example: turkeys too fat to breed, the Kava plant which only propagates through human intervention, corn, seedless fruits. We tend to change organisms to suit our needs without any thought of how these changes fit in with the natural world. It's like as we humans are devolving we are busy devolving the things around us.
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
So, you don't like the definitions universally adopted by mathematicians, and you've decided to make up your own. Fine, but don't expect the rest of the world to agree with you.
I would certainly like to know how we'd end up with a fraction of a species
By choosing an annoying species and decimating it.
Whilst I'm sure there are great discoveries to come from gene and synthetic life technologies, I feel it would be a mistake for us to dismiss the benefits of research into plant-based medicines.
Millions of lives have been saved, and are still being saved by the use of plant-derived medicines which include anti-malarials, analgesics, anti-cancer drugs, steroids etc.
It may be a bit hit-and-miss looking for plant extracts that have pharmacological properties but it has been proven to be an effective way of discovering and/or producing new drugs so why dismiss it? Incidentally, it's not always a totally random process - researchers use the knowledge of local healers (or "witch doctors" as you call them) to identify candidate plants for research, or look at plants that have biological effects on other animals etc.
One day we might have the knowledge and skills you hope for, but until then, we'd be missing a big opportunity if we didn't do our best to investigate the properties of plants we have access to right now.
"... very single beetle with a slightly different coloration OBVIOUSLY counts as a new species ..."
Why obviously? The only definition of a species is that two organisms that cannot mate are, by definition, different species.
I think you mean "mate" as "can produce viable offspring", not as "can try to produce offspring" here... ;-)
Anyway, better definition is, populations that won't interbreed even when brought together are different species. There are always individual organisms of same species that can't produce offspring together due to genetic incompatibilities.
May I formally request that we start with humans? They're easily the most annoying.
I would also like to suggest that we start with the btard sub(human)species, for maximum efficiency.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Enough! Get off!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
*Touché
:x
It's one possible solution to the problem of classifying Ring Species. For the simplest case, where populations (A+B) could be classified as a species, and populations (B+C) could as well, but (A+C) could not, how many species do you have? I could make strong arguments for one, two, two-point-five, and three.
It gets even trickier with longer rings/chains. If (A+B), (B+C), and (C+D) all meet a definition of "species", but (A+D) doesn't (requirement of "ring species"), that still leaves open questions about (A+C) and (B+D). One possible solution is to use larger or smaller fractions depending on the answers to those pairings.
Of course, there's also the issue of defining "species"--what Wikipedia calls the "Species Problem". Note that I was careful to say above, "could be classified as a species", or "meet a definition of species". The common definition, "able to produce fertile offspring" is almost meaningless to microbiologists (where sex--genetic sharing--is separate from reproduction) and unanswerable by paleontologists, since extinct species rarely reproduce.
As Dawkins argues, the whole concepts of species and families and kingdoms seems to stem from an attempt to inflict Platonic idealism on a messy and ambiguous reality. Life is chaotic. Should we be surprised if it turns out to have a fractal nature and fractional dimension? :)
The computer models are getting better at this, but man what a storm. It is a wonder though to watch a whole branch of the evolutionary tree get torn off its ancient Linean home and regrafted back to the trunk or a different branch entirely.
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
The most successful creature on earth is not Man. It is the grasses. We water them, feed them, and spread their young. Any alien watching from space would say that we are slaves to wheat, corn, rye, barley, and green green grass.
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
This is especially evident in cases of ring speciation. Example with 5 species, A through E:
Species A can mate with B and E. B can mate with A and C. C can mate with B and D. D can mate with C and E. E can mate with D and A.
A cannot mate with C or D. B cannot mate with D or E. C cannot mate with E or A. D cannot mate with B or A. E cannot mate with B or C.
The species form a ring (often a literal geographic ring) and can hybridize with the adjacent species, but not with the opposing ones. If producing fertile offspring were the only definition of a species there would be a conflict.
Not a sentence!
Before that, I would like to prove that we are two different species by mating with you and I am damn sure we won't produce offspring, Coren.
"... A can mate with B and E ..."
Normally in a ring species A cannot mate with E.
America, Home of the Brave.
Before that, I would like to prove that we are two different species by mating with you and I am damn sure we won't produce offspring, Coren.
Worst pickup line ever.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
I count 1... 2... 3... 4...
4 Bats Ah Ah Ah.
I count 1... 2... 3... 4...
4 Bats Ah Ah Ah.
I paused for a second, waiting for the flash of lightning and crack of thunder, but it didn't come...
Thanks for the laugh, though! :-D
As far as I know that is incorrect. If A cannot mate with E they do not form a ring. Larus gulls, the classic example, do form a ring, and can mate all the way around (A can mate with E).
Not a sentence!
...they use the method I mentioned to "prove" to non-Christians that the universe cannot possibly be more than 4,000, 6,000, or 10,000 years old. Many people who get into arguments where this "proof" is used fail to catch the underlying problem (that the population growth rate is not following an exact exponential curve: it would have gone up and down in the past in response to environmental factors, wars, etc.).
The name-counting from the Bible is how they originally arrived at the numbers they can't agree on (which interestingly originally came from a rabbi), but they're willing to throw any spaghetti against the wall they can in attempts to "prove" their existing belief to themselves and to others.
Whenever one species dies out, it leaves behind an ecological niche for some other species to take advantage of. For instance, the rise of mammals is directly tied to the mass extinction of dinosaurs. The total number of species in the world is not going to decrease at a constant rate.
Surely none of them are technically different species then.
I thought ring species were normally used as a demonstration of how new species could evolve through geographical separation.
America, Home of the Brave.
They are an example of how new species can evolve through geographical separation. If they were all one species than any population could mate with any other, since that isn't the case they are separate species.
Not a sentence!
Are you a chick?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Nah, but I got a dick! Yeah?