Eh, for the most part yes but really “species” is a social construct and sometimes two members of the same species can’t interbreed at all ; see ring species for example, where for a very brief example, a central population of salamanders can interbreed with northern and southern populations but the northern and southern populations can’t interbreed with each other, and if the northern population extends south west and the southern population extends north west they can overlap but still not interbreed but also still exchange genes by both breeding with the central population, super funky stuff!
But then you can also have clearly different species that mostly can’t produce viable offspring but sometimes can; rarely mule can produce offspring for example.
There are also different species that can regularly and reliably produce viable offspring such as various species of milksnake and kingsnake (see particularly the imperial pueblan milksnake hybrid of pueblan milksnakes and Californian king snakes), between horses and Przewalski’s horse (which even have different numbers of chromosomes), between American bison and domestic cattle, and camel hybrids (who readily and regularly backcross to produce 75% dromedaries or 75% bactrians).
Biology is so messy and interesting! I find it fascinating. I don’t mean to undermine your point about racists calling different modern humans different species being a bad thing; it might be an interesting biological discussion but racists poison the well so to speak. The utility of camel hybrids and backcrosses would be evidence enough to show a reasonable person why it wouldn’t be a bad thing. Alas, racists are dumb.
Unless you draw a hard line, which is what biologists did…
super funky stuff!
Super common stuff… Nature just weird bro.
There are also different species that can regularly and reliably produce viable offspring
Then they’re not truly different species…
Like, I already linked and quoted the part from Brittanica about how we don’t have to just go off morphology to differentiate like we did when people decided those were different species.
I really don’t understand the confusion here.
Every argument for why that shouldn’t be the sole line, circles back to “that’s not how we always did it”.
Do you understand that and are just arguing for the consistency of it despite it not logically making sense?
Cuz that’s just an opinion, I’m not gonna be able to change that
Logic tho, that’s just what it is. And that’s kind of the hocky pocky of science.
In biology, a ring species is a connected series of neighbouring populations, each of which interbreeds with closely sited related populations, but for which there exist at least two end populations in the series which are too distantly related to interbreed, though there is a potential gene flow between linked neighbouring populations.[1]
End points have differentiated enough to speciate, what’s in between is a “sub-species” of both.
I don’t understand how you think that’s different then the normal process, it’s literally the normal process when there isn’t a clear geographical divide…
Your position is that something can be two species at once? I suppose that is one way to solve the problem of where to draw the line for speciation!
Completely out of line with the perspective of modern biology but fascinating and internally coherent none the less! It will take me years to fully digest this perspective. Thank you.
Saying that something can be two species at once is none the less not a compelling argument against the concept of a species being a social construct, as your perspective clashes with others’.
Eh, for the most part yes but really “species” is a social construct and sometimes two members of the same species can’t interbreed at all ; see ring species for example, where for a very brief example, a central population of salamanders can interbreed with northern and southern populations but the northern and southern populations can’t interbreed with each other, and if the northern population extends south west and the southern population extends north west they can overlap but still not interbreed but also still exchange genes by both breeding with the central population, super funky stuff!
But then you can also have clearly different species that mostly can’t produce viable offspring but sometimes can; rarely mule can produce offspring for example.
There are also different species that can regularly and reliably produce viable offspring such as various species of milksnake and kingsnake (see particularly the imperial pueblan milksnake hybrid of pueblan milksnakes and Californian king snakes), between horses and Przewalski’s horse (which even have different numbers of chromosomes), between American bison and domestic cattle, and camel hybrids (who readily and regularly backcross to produce 75% dromedaries or 75% bactrians).
Biology is so messy and interesting! I find it fascinating. I don’t mean to undermine your point about racists calling different modern humans different species being a bad thing; it might be an interesting biological discussion but racists poison the well so to speak. The utility of camel hybrids and backcrosses would be evidence enough to show a reasonable person why it wouldn’t be a bad thing. Alas, racists are dumb.
Unless you draw a hard line, which is what biologists did…
Super common stuff… Nature just weird bro.
Then they’re not truly different species…
Like, I already linked and quoted the part from Brittanica about how we don’t have to just go off morphology to differentiate like we did when people decided those were different species.
I really don’t understand the confusion here.
Every argument for why that shouldn’t be the sole line, circles back to “that’s not how we always did it”.
Do you understand that and are just arguing for the consistency of it despite it not logically making sense?
Cuz that’s just an opinion, I’m not gonna be able to change that
Logic tho, that’s just what it is. And that’s kind of the hocky pocky of science.
I say this with respect: your response looks as though you did not fully consider the impact of ring species as I had mentioned.
Please take a closer look and get back to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species
End points have differentiated enough to speciate, what’s in between is a “sub-species” of both.
I don’t understand how you think that’s different then the normal process, it’s literally the normal process when there isn’t a clear geographical divide…
Your position is that something can be two species at once? I suppose that is one way to solve the problem of where to draw the line for speciation!
Completely out of line with the perspective of modern biology but fascinating and internally coherent none the less! It will take me years to fully digest this perspective. Thank you.
Saying that something can be two species at once is none the less not a compelling argument against the concept of a species being a social construct, as your perspective clashes with others’.
No, I’m saying two species can share a mutual subspecies…
I’m not sure if it makes more sense one way or the other, but obviously that’s a fundamental point you’d need to get before we move further.
But you keep down voting and being weirdly argumentative about this.
You do realize I gain absolutely nothing from helping you understand, right?
If you act like this, most people are just going to stop trying to teach you stuff
So what species is the sub species then under your framework?