/sci/ - Science & Math

>>16010616
>Key difference between Humans and Canines is that Humans have actual population gradients (regional ethnicities).
>If Europeans just consisted of absolute extremes e.g. Swedes while Sub-Saharan Africans just consisted of Zulus the Wolf and Coyote comparison would be plausible.
Making excuses. Wolves and coyotes also have gradients.

>>15776116
>Because they can mate, what is a race today will not be in the future, and what is not a race today could be in the future.
Species that can not mate can evolve in the future or go extinct, and groups that can can drift apart and lose that ability and become separate species.
That unavoidable change never made taxonomy worthless, so why would it for subspecies ?

Besides that, species is not where the breeding stops. Plenty of separate species spontaneously breed fertile offspring in the wild. Dogs, wolves, coyotes and jackals do so, for example. In north america most wolves are part coyote and conversely, and two self-sustained populations of hybrids with uncertain taxonomical status, red wolves and eastern wolves, have appeared. It's even a conservation problem for many species : a different species is introduced and starts breeding with the local one until it disappears and only hybrids are left. This is the case of the american crocodile with the cuban crocodile, or the green iguana with the antillean iguana, or the mallard duck with sixty-fucking-three other species of ducks... Biologists call this "genetic pollution".

>>15545738
>I don't know about wolves and coyotes
Their offspring is fertile. In fact there has been a lot of spontaneous gene flow among their populations in north america. Dogs which are currently considered a different species from wolves, and jackals can also have fertile offspring with the others.
There are many examples of different species with fertile offspring.
Carrion crows and hooded crows, domestic cats and wild cats, american crocodiles and cuban crocodiles are a few I can remember.

Species are not well-defined in terms of biology. It's a weird mix of the old phenotypical classification, conflicting ad hoc definitions, and phylogenetic corrections.