speciation

From ScienceDaily: Scientists have shown that a bird found in Pennsylvania is the offspring of a hybrid warbler mother and a warbler father from an entirely different genus — a combination never recorded before now and which resulted in a three-species hybrid bird. This finding has just been published in the journal Biology Letters. “It’s extremely rare,” explains lead author and Cornell Lab of Ornithology postdoctoral associate David Toews. “The female is a Golden-winged/Blue-winged Warbler hybrid — also called a Brewster’s Warbler. She then mated with a Chestnut-sided Warbler and successfully reproduced.” Well, if all we’ve heard about “species” and “speciation” is true, it shouldn’t just be extremely rare; it should be impossible. Hybridization is common among Golden-winged and Blue-winged Read More ›

The abstract of a new paper, “Species as Models” by Jun Otsuka of Kyoto University (PhilSci Archive, 2018): This paper argues that biological species should be construed as abstract models, rather than biological or even tangible entities. Various (phenetic, cladistic, biological etc.) species concepts are defined as set-theoretic models of formal theories, and their logical connections are illustrated. In this view organisms relate to a species not as instantiations, members, or mereological parts, but rather as phenomena to be represented by the model/species. This sheds new light on the long-standing problems of species and suggests their connection to broader philosophical topics such as model selection, scientific representation, and scientific realism. More. Readers may be able to explain what light it Read More ›

But don’t tell Mother Jones’s readers: The Census of Marine Life closing ceremony was meant to celebrate the fact that humans had, for the first time, estimated how many species there were in the sea. The Sloan Foundation, which partially funded the $650 million, 10-year project, organized the event. Scientists had been trying to uncover this magic number for at least 250 years. Previous estimates had put the number somewhere between three million and 100 million species on Earth—a nice way of saying they had no idea. But on this day, Mora and his team were supposed to unveil a much more specific conclusion. Reporters swarmed the museum, hoping to get the scoop on the scientists’ discovery. The spokespersons for Read More ›