Can a new species emerge?

[Shaula]

Interpretation of the fossil record seems to indicate that change happens in spurts. Perhaps that's due to environmental stressors.

Adaptation, what a concept!

 

[Oberon]

Adaptation, what a concept!

I meant that change happened in spurts as opposed to the smooth continuum of change that Synarch's comment appeared to imply. Mention of change as being continuous may be technically accurate, but doesn't by itself convey the entire picture.

 

[norepinephrine]

I meant that change happened in spurts as opposed to the smooth continuum of change that Synarch's comment appeared to imply. Mention of change as being continuous may be technically accurate, but doesn't by itself convey the entire picture.

Punctuated equilibrium. Stephen Jay Gould.

 

[Colors]

Yeah, but even the faster parts are going to be heavily gradual when observed in our short lifetimes, no? (Unless we're looking at something that lives/reproduces very, very quickly.)

 

[sculpting]

I heard a vague rumor that these bursts may have involved the poles of the earth switching from north to south which allowed for periods of higher uv light exposure and thus more mutations. (however I can't remember WTF i read that honestly).

I did hear a cool talk from a biochemist who was watching a species of some little microbe evolved genetically over fifty years of collection.

Also this happens every single time you take antibiotics or grow bugs in culture under antibiotics. A few always mutate and are then resistant to the antibiotic. I spent a whole summer trying to isolate a plasmid when the little bugs had a point mutation in the plasmid that prevented the selective antibiotic from working properly.

 

[Oberon]

Punctuated equilibrium. Stephen Jay Gould.

Stephen Jay Gould didn't do it.

(I thought you weren't a theist...)

 

[norepinephrine]

Stephen Jay Gould didn't do it.

(I thought you weren't a theist...)

Yeah huh. In the library. With a candlestick.

 

[Fluffywolf]

Classification of species is man-made.

If you look at the big picture. (Suppose all evolution of life on this planet started with a single cell organism for example.) One could say all living things on this planet are of the same species. That single cell species that just happened to evolve into many many different branches in a long period of time.

A classification of species is merely mankind saying: I found bones, they date from here, based and this and that I call it Badaboom. So in terms of future. Renaming spieces as they involve is unlikely. Suppose the tiger will be as big as a cat over a million years, it will still be a tiger for human kind at that time. New species that could be mentioned are for example cross breeds. (Dog species is a good example.) But one could argue they're new speciesness.

All in all, that which is already classified, will inlikely be re-classified.


That's how I see it anyways. Ofcourse I've no idea what mankind will do. If over ten years we breed enough Ligers (tiger/lion hybrid) to make a new species for example, we could say that's a new species. But then dog breeding can be considered the same.