> Just how different two organisms have to be to be different species is always going to be arbitrary.
Isn't the decision made based on if mating can happen (and the offspring can procreate)?
Isn't the decision made based on if mating can happen (and the offspring can procreate)?
Not my field of interest but I feel reminded of dialects and how difficult it is to define language. The dialect with a military meme has some truth to it, when variet are measured against a standard or prestige dialect. B obviously has an advantage so unless other disadvantages apply, it would be dominant.
A societal (?) or socio-cultural definition is interesting as well. Even genetically identical specimen couldn't mate if on opposite sites of the globe, and they are bound to drift eventually. I do kindle with the idea that groups have to be understood as organisms in their own right, but I never read anything specific about it.
About language families, it is startling how anthropologists reason about language by proxy via archaogenetics. Lots of open questions there, too.
To me, they are not. (In my not-know-much about this opinion)
And B is a bridge species, or A C adapter species, sort of?
But is this ABC situation really common? So frequent so motivates how to (not) define what a species is?
You aren’t going to get a half deer half turtle, but the closer two organisms are, the more likely they have some degree of compatibility, even after millions of years of evolution.
It’s like asking people to determine if a color is orange or red. There are obvious answers and not so obvious answers.
And they aren't the only examples of that, either (i.e consider Denisovans)