What a 'species' means today... was: Fish gDNA isolation
Nathan McCorkle
> Cool. I didn't expect the link to be spot on.
>
> If it is a common food stock like Tilapia. Know that some of those are not
> true species but hybrid of two species.
In today's world, what should we really think of as a species? If we
were looking at the three animals DNA sequences, the hybrid would just
be the selective merging of the two parent animals. I think it would
be analogous to computer science version control systems... where they
call things branches (I think). Just like code, certain merge
operations end up failing (immediate or latent disease), but sometimes
things are just fine.
So what's interesting about each person essentially being their own
code-branch? Do we say we're all different species, if not, is there
some hard threshold (% difference of parents, or any other sequence
for that matter), or is the threshold more abstract (but still able to
be articulated)?
Yuriy Fazylov
Species is another word, much like gene, planet, dust, or IUPAC name. You have to find a few dedicated specialist to set up some ground rules. Otherwise very little moves forward.
Cathal Garvey
corpus of life on earth (that derived/derives from common descent) into
neatly labelled boxes.
It's useful, but in many ways today it's outliving its usefulness as
people get it backwards, and think "species" are part of a "natural
order", whereas nature only ever produces more diversity and complexity,
by divergence and hybridisation and HGT all over the place.
The fact that not everything can crossbreed is largely an accidental
byproduct of divergent approaches to adaptation; you copied a chromosome
along the way, I deleted one. Even then, many species can crossbreed,
and I'd be interested in seeing work trying to "work back" through
serial hybridisation to approximate intermediate forms. Look at orchids
for a good example of the species concept breaking down en-masse.
So yea, philosophical, but with real-world implications; when
greenpeacers use the concept of "species" to oppose bio/clean-tech that
would actually help resolve some environmental problems, that's a real
consequence.
On 02/10/14 07:47, Yuriy Fazylov wrote:
> philosophical discussion. See Wikipedia.
>
> Species is another word, much like gene, planet, dust, or IUPAC name. You have to find a few dedicated specialist to set up some ground rules. Otherwise very little moves forward.
>
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Nathan McCorkle
On Oct 1, 2014 11:47 PM, "Yuriy Fazylov" <yuriy...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> philosophical discussion. See Wikipedia.
That isn't very fun or social though...
> Species is another word, much like gene, planet, dust, or IUPAC name.
IMO an IUPAC name is more like a DNA sequence, pretty exact except lacking 3D info.
You have to find a few dedicated specialist to set up some ground rules. Otherwise very little moves forward.
>
Or we start talking now and become the specialists.
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Yuriy Fazylov
When I wrote specialists I meant specialists in the field of that order or genera study. Classify it if you study it. You have to have some consensus.
Wikipedia is as social as it gets. It's democratization of knowledge. If you don't know diddly-squat about squat, you turn to Wikipedia and suddenly you're pro.
You have to keep asking yourself "what deserves species classification?" To each his/her own.
-Trying to define species of clam shrimp is a head to vice deal. They have gender & breeding strategy disagreements between genera.
-Grasshopper to Locust transition; do either one deserve a distinct species name? And can interbreeding occur there? Or is there a lockout? (Don't drag these out into the forum)
-On rare occasion some plant species will freely blend disregarding their morphologies and geographic localization. Most multi generation hybrids, again in plants, go sterile the more you try to hybridize them. Not an issue with transgenes.
Again, philosophical.