hyenas<\/a> are felids… not canines.<\/p>\nThe Red Panda (time for a “squeeee” picture)<\/p>\n
is most closely related to skunks, not pandas or even bears.\u00a0 It’s a weasel.<\/p>\n
But things get even worse when you get into closely related species.\u00a0 Let me give you an example.<\/p>\n
There’s this thing called a cline.\u00a0 At least that’s how I was taught it, that word seems not to be used much anymore.\u00a0 Anyway, let’s say you have a species of squirrel that lives in the southern end of the Appalachian mountain range, right up to the Gulf Coast.\u00a0 Just north of this species and sharing some of its range is another, closely related species of squirrel.\u00a0 So closely related, that interbreeding can and does occur, but only at the extreme north of the first species range and the extreme south of the second species range.\u00a0 I bet you can see where this is going…<\/p>\n
Yep, just north and overlapping slightly with the second species is a third species.\u00a0 North of the third species and just slightly overlapping is a fourth.\u00a0 This continues all the way into southern Canada.\u00a0 It looks something like this.<\/p>\n
A — B — C — D — E — F — G — H<\/p>\n
Now, A can interbreed with B and B with C and C with D, etc. etc. etc.\u00a0 But in captivity, A totally ignores D, E, F, G, and H.\u00a0 In fact, the mating period and signals for A\/B and G\/H are so different, even if they recognized each other, they would never pair up.\u00a0 So, here’s the question…<\/p>\n
Where do you draw the line?<\/p>\n
What line? They are all different species right?<\/p>\n
Well, yes, they are.\u00a0 But “species” is a touchy subject and blood at taxonomy conferences flows freely when people start trying to define species.\u00a0 Axes, chainsaws, machetes… it’s ugly.<\/p>\n
So, let’s think about something that we know are the same species… we think.<\/p>\n
Go ahead, tell me that those two dogs (Canis familaris<\/em>) could successfully mate without human intervention.\u00a0 The mind boggles at just the physical dissimilarities.\u00a0 A step-ladder won’t even help that much.\u00a0 Not to mention carrying the pups to term.\u00a0 If the wolfhound was the mom, it would take the pups a week to get to a nipple.<\/p>\nBut these are the same species… I think.\u00a0 This is another cline.<\/p>\n
Miniature poodle to corgi to beagle to foxhound to pitbull to lab to German Shepard to wolfhound.<\/p>\n
So where do we draw the line where the interbreeding stops?\u00a0 We can’t and that’s the problem.\u00a0 We can’t just say foxhound to pitbull, that’s where the line is.\u00a0 Everything smaller than these can mate and everything bigger than these can mate.\u00a0 Because that’s not true.<\/p>\n
It’s a tough question and one that doesn’t have a good answer… in terms of taxonomy.\u00a0 But there is a solution to this conundrum and it lies with evolution.<\/p>\n
Instead of trying to decide which animals look more alike (and why a weasel is called a panda).\u00a0 Let’s look at the evolutionary history of the organisms and just see who is most closely related to whom.\u00a0 This really took off with the knowledge of molecular biology and the ability to sequence DNA, starting in the mid 1980s, but really coming to the fore now.<\/p>\n
Instead of the normal taxonomic system of closed little boxes within boxes within boxes.\u00a0 We get something that looks like this:<\/p>\nThe Late Miocene Radiation of Modern Felidae: A Genetic Assessment in the Jan 6 issue of the journal Science (Science 311, 73-77 (2006)) by WE Johnson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThis is a fairly recent study of the entire felid group.\u00a0 From this chart, which is made from lots and lots of genetic analyses and some fairly significant computer time, we can see that most modern species of cats split off from each other about 10.8 million years ago.\u00a0 The Big cats broke off from the smaller cats at the time and have stayed a tight little group.\u00a0 Then you get into all the smaller cat species with the domestic cat breaking off from the European Wild Cat very recently (top of the chart).<\/p>\n
Basically, the fewer branches between two species, the more closely related they are.\u00a0 Not all cladograms show time like this one does, but a few do.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, the mere fact that we can make these kinds of charts pretty much undermines any form of Young Earth Creationism.<\/p>\n
And yes, cladograms have been made that include every organism on Earth.\u00a0 The Tree of Life<\/a> Project is an ongoing attempt to related everything.\u00a0 And yes, I’ve seen the big round one that supposes to contain everything, but it doesn’t.\u00a0 If you zoom in, you’ll see that humans are most closely related to rats.\u00a0 I was mad when I saw that.\u00a0 Do they think no one checks these things?<\/p>\nMy original point, before I got distracted with pictures of red pandas, was that there are a lot of things in this world that are categorized that really probably shouldn’t be.\u00a0 Species, intelligence, political party, etc.<\/p>\n
Wow, 1200 words to say that.\u00a0 Well, I hoped you learned something about taxonomy regardless.<\/p>\n
_______________________<\/p>\n
* The top is the Greater Antillean Grackle (Quisalus niger<\/em>).\u00a0 Middle is the Common blackbird (Turdus merula<\/em>).\u00a0 Bottom is the Carrion Crow (Corvus corone<\/em>).\u00a0 Just in case anyone is curious.<\/p>\n** I find that much easier to remember than “King Phillip came over for good soup.” Perhaps I shouldn’t have taught it that way to 10th graders, but they bloody well remembered it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I love taxonomy.\u00a0 I’m one of those guys who loves putting everything in its place.\u00a0 I love to buy storage…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,28,6],"tags":[110,111,113,112],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biology","category-evolution","category-genetics","category-science","tag-cladogram","tag-cline","tag-common-descent","tag-ring-species"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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