New Giant Tortoise Species Found on Galápagos Islands
news.nationalgeographic.com
New Giant Tortoise Species Found on Galápagos Islands
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Re: New Giant Tortoise Species Found on Galápagos Islands
#2The fact that members of all of these groups readily hybridize would violate some interpretations of the concept of species. The article exposes the arbitrariness of the concept. Also, mtDNA and microsatellites (short stretches of repetitive DNA that expand and contract quickly) offer only a fragmentary picture of genetic history. It is unfortunate that the researchers were not able to use modern sequencing techniques, but in the case of museum samples these are sometimes not possible.
Re: New Giant Tortoise Species Found on Galápagos Islands
#3I hope they don't do to it what they did to the giant squid when they discovered that too (kill it).
Re: New Giant Tortoise Species Found on Galápagos Islands
#4I hope they don't do to it what they did to the giant squid when they discovered that too (kill it).
I read several articles on this. My recollection is that conservation of giant tortoises has been very successful and that identifying this as a separate species will most likely result in efforts to further increase members of this specific species. IIRC, it only has 250 members, much lower than the 2000+ members of the group it was thought to be part of. So identifying it as a separate species is expected to help increase their numbers.
Re: New Giant Tortoise Species Found on Galápagos Islands
#5The fact that members of all of these groups readily hybridize would violate some interpretations of the concept of species. The article exposes the arbitrariness of the concept. Also, mtDNA and microsatellites (short stretches of repetitive DNA that expand and contract quickly) offer only a fragmentary picture of genetic history. It is unfortunate that the researchers were not able to use modern sequencing technique…
The existence of ring species says that there must be arbitrariness in deciding where to draw the line. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species for an explanation.
That said, where and when hybridization is possible is a complex question. For example consider the following pairs of species. (polar bears, brown bears), (horses, donkeys), (humans, chimpanzees). All are at about the same evolutionary distance from each other (current estimates are 5 million years, 4.5 million years and 6 million years). The bears happily interbreed, the equines interbreed but the babies are not generally fertile, and there are no reports of successful human/chimpanzee crosses. (No reports of anyone admitting to trying either, but it would be hard to believe that the attempt was nowhere made.)
Yet in all three cases, biologists generally agree that those are pairs of distinct species.
Re: New Giant Tortoise Species Found on Galápagos Islands
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Re: New Giant Tortoise Species Found on Galápagos Islands
#7I hope these are not as tasty as the first set we discovered
Re: New Giant Tortoise Species Found on Galápagos Islands
#8The fact that members of all of these groups readily hybridize would violate some interpretations of the concept of species. The article exposes the arbitrariness of the concept. Also, mtDNA and microsatellites (short stretches of repetitive DNA that expand and contract quickly) offer only a fragmentary picture of genetic history. It is unfortunate that the researchers were not able to use modern sequencing technique…
The existence of ring species says that there must be arbitrariness in deciding where to draw the line. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species for an explanation. That said, where and when hybridization is possible is a complex question. For example consider the following pairs of species. (polar bears, brown bears), (horses, donkeys), (humans, chimpanzees). All are at about the same evolutionary distance fro…
I learned of the Ivanov experiments after the topic of hybridization came up at a blog I used to follow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Ivanovich_Ivanov
Re: New Giant Tortoise Species Found on Galápagos Islands
#9I hope they don't do to it what they did to the giant squid when they discovered that too (kill it).
They probably did a mouth swab or drew blood. Not hard to do without hurting the turtle.
Re: New Giant Tortoise Species Found on Galápagos Islands
#10Looks like turtle soup is back on the menu, boys.