What do we Mean by a Species?

Thoughts

1. Gog and Magog, are they different species from humans?
2. Therefore, by definition, humans all belong to the same species.
3. Have Gog and Magog specialized and becomes a different species than humans due to isolation?
4. What about isolated communities like in Siwa, Nubia and other more isolated ones such as in Islands (belonging to India for instance where contact has been attempted yet unsuccessfully).
5. Hybridization in American population, what does it lead to.
6. Inadvertent hybridization of F1 hybrids with other forms of the same species or hybridization among different cultivars of a plant may result in unfavorable results in offspring.
7. What is a cultivar? (A form of ecotype?)
8. Isolated communities of humans, like Siwa and Nubia, have imposed cultural rules of not marrying from outside their communities.
9. Donkeys and horses produce infertile mules when they mate. This fits them perfectly within the definition of being two distinct species (two distinct biospecies).

Hybridization against forces of natural selection

Digest

• Speciation, the forming of distinct species, is a process not a sudden event
• Hybridization and natural selection are two opposing forces
• According to the Mayr-Dobzhansky test, two organisms belong to the same biospecies if they could breed together in nature to produce fertile offspring
• Allopatric speciation vs sympatric speciation
• Ecological speciation is speciation driven by divergent natural selection in distinct subpopulations according to Dolph Schluter (2001)
• Stages of speciation (in the most orthodox view of ecological speciation):
1. Two subpopulations become geographically isolated and natural selection drives genetic adaptation to their local environments
2. Reproductive isolation (pre-zygotic or post-zygotic) builds up between the two subpopulations
3. The two subpopulations re-meet in a phase of secondary contact
4. The hybrids between individuals from the different subpopulations are now of low fitness. Natural selection will then favor any feature in either subpopulation that reinforces reproductive isolation preventing the production of low fitness hybrid offspring. These breeding barriers then cement the distinction between what have now become separate species.
• In northern Europe, the lesser black-backed gull and the herring gull are now two distinct species. They do not hybridize and are therefore true biospecies.  Their 'ancestors' still hybridize freely after spreading east and west from Siberia.

European herring gull (top) and lesser black-backed gull (bottom)

Questions

1. So, what exactly is a species?
2. So, ecotypes are different forms of the same species? Also different forms, like peppered moths (melanic and nonmelanic) belong to the same species?
3. How come species are classified by scientists then reclassified later on in a different way?

Genetic Polymorphism

Thoughts

When selecting a plant from its natural habitat, say from Aswan, to transplant elsewhere, it is a good idea to select from a location that would provide the characteristics you desire in the plant (ex: lower elevation to be more drought tolerant ... etc.)

Digest

• "The distinction between local ecotypes and polymorphic populations is not always a clear one."
• Genetic polymorshipsm was defined by Edmund Brisco Ford in 1940 as: "the occurrence together in the same habitat of two or more discontinuous forms of a species in such proportions that the rarest of them cannot merely be maintained by recurrent mutation or immigration".
• Transient polymorphisms occur when conditions in a habitat change so that one form is being replaced by another.
• In contrast to transient polymorphism, many polymorphisms are actively maintained in a population by natural selection, and there are a number of ways in which this may occur:
• Heterozygotes may be of superior fitness, but continually generate less fit homozygotes within the population
• Presence of gradients of selective forces favoring one morph at one end of the gradient and another form at the other
• There may be frequency-dependent selection in which each of the morphs of a species is fittest when it is rarest
• Selective forces may operate in different directions within different patches in the population

Questions

1. What is the difference between polymorphism and ecotypes?
2. What is polymorphism?
3. What are ecotypes?

Geographic Variation within Species: Ecotypes

Digest

• ecotypes: geographic variation within species
• local adaptation can occur within the same species
• there are experiments that can be done to check if two populations of a species at different environments have undergone local adaptation
• examples of plants that have been locally adapted (populations at high and low altitudes) and plants that have not been locally adapted (dispersed at distances starting from 0.1 to 2000 km apart)
• experiments are done by transplanting members of both populations under investigation at the same environment then measuring to see if differences between them appear
• there can exist a balance between local adaptation and hybridization: "local selection by no means always overrides hybridization"

Ecotype experiment

Questions

• Which of the two are considered to be ecotypes?
• Are the different ones still considered of the same species?

Questions

1. How can experiments be made to test the interaction between hybridization and specialization (divergence)?
2. What are ecotypes?