I meant our lineage, other species could split off and loose their compatability. Plus, we could interbreed with neanderthals, and possibly some others, so we weren’t separate species in the tradition sense.
What really happens when two subspecies merge back into one? Does the subspecies with less share of the genome truly go extinct like non-avian dinosaurs even tho parts of it’s genes still persist?
I was imagining a hypothetical scenerio (omniscient) where there are lots of fossils, that happens more often than speciation, and you could revive (clone) them, and test if they can reproduce.
You can’t really merge species. If humans (sapiens) and neanderthals were both seperate, say some N. (neanderthals) in western russia and S. (sapiens) in central africa, then they went exploring, bet in souther europe and the levant and whatnot, and interbred, think about what happens. if all three can interbreed, they are actually all the same species, different subspecies at most. If the pure human can reproduce with the mixed H. and S. group,
and the N. can also interbreed with the mixed group, but the humans and neanderthals can rarely mate at all, than you have a ring species. If all three groups can’t interbreed, you have three species, and mixing the two made a new species. Those don’t seem likely though. If you’re mixing, you’re pretty much always the same species already to by knowledge.
everything is a ring species, by definition the entire tree of life is a ring species. That’s also a ridiculous standard to hold yourself too.
Also remember that not all the resulting from reproduction between 2 not-so-related populations may be able to reproduce themselves, which should probably count the same as two populations not being able to reproduce between eachother.
Yeah if you can reproduce but the offspring can’t that’s a dead end and doesn’t count as “successful” reproduction. (it’s weirdly eugenics-y but I suppose that’s why only crazy people try to pitch evolution (Darwinism) as morality)
If all three can’t reproduce with eachother, how did the “child” species come to be from the two “parent” species?
quick evolution? It doesn’t make much sense to me either. seems very unlikely. I do bet it’s possible though. Like what if one in ten ligers could have children with exclusively other ligers. You could get a really lame, inefficient species.
edit: it kinda makes more sense as an answer to the question
because it could be that a mixed set of genes is 100% dominant and way better than either and they evolve to a niche the other two couldn’t get to.
entire tree of life. isn’t a tree ring species. two populations may lack someone they can both reproduce with.
but this isn’t relevant to “ridicilous standard”. the standard is, you can see speciation as is happens. it is an ideal case scenerio. people can do idealisations. and it can happen for some recent species in the future.
Oh, so from two subspecies evolved a third one.
in the ideal case everything is a ring species. yes it’s a ring species shapes like a tree, not a ring, but I don’t think that’s a term. In the real world where we don’t see everything and don’t get time travel, we find separated populations that don’t interbreed. If you can move along time as easily as left or right you have to do something silly like assume speciation is a temporal thing that occurs every x million years., because species are only separate right now. We only know the speciesness of extant species.
i assume? it doesn’t seem too sane to me either.
I’ve heard there were various discussions about certain fossils being younger/older versions (as in the physical age of the fossil organism) of the same species and not separate species
the non avian genome present is bird genome is coming from a common ancestor. non avian genes went extinct, geneologically. even if some identical parts still exist.
they say its debunked, if you’re talking about triceretops
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dinosaurs/comments/rjphm5/triceratops_exists_right/
Non-avian is not a clade. It’s an illegal clade. It’s like saying “my favorite species is dogs that aren’t Labradors” or “as yeah, i invented a clade, it’s mammals without the whales or seals because mammals are land animals” it isn’t based in evolution or genes It’s irrelevant that non-avian dna is still around or not. The deciding factor isn’t dna-based because it isn’t a clade. It’s just all members of the dinosaurs that died 66 million years ago. We talk about them like a clade because they’re a huge group we can only understand through fossils and birds, and that’s interesting and worth talking about.
I here more tried to differenciate this “assimilation extinction” vs “total, surviving gene-less” extinction (like how there are no longer any sauropod descendants living at the present).
you mean, like, neanderthals gave 30% of their genes to humans kind of extinction?
if a subspecies goes extinct, but the species doesn’t, i think that can be considered similar to a bottleneck event or inbreeding depression. “selection depression” could be a suitable name. “niche collapse depression”? “remerging depression”?
Pretty sure it was NOT caused by niche collapse, but by the two subspecies coming into closer contact with eachother.
Why does this thread say I made it?
does it?
" unlike other vertebrates where competition generally suppresses speciation after ecological niches are filled, the Homo lineage shows an unusual trend where increased competition coincides with an increase in the formation of new species."
“at least five other species of humans were at some point sharing this pale blue dot of ours”
"Ultimately, this led to the rise of Homo sapiens —the quintessential generalists. Competing as flexible generalists in nearly every ecological niche might have driven the extinction of other Homo species "
ancient earth was probably like tolkien’s middle earth. every human species filled a different role. maybe the denisovans collected vegetables, built homes and made fire, and homo erectus hunted meat instead. they lived in the same village.
homo sapiens was a generalist subspecies, it filled all the niches at the same time. there wasn’t a reason to have all those other subspecies anymore. they went extinct.
or more accurately, a prehistoric version of middle earth
