Observing the Origin of a new Species...

[Ganoderma]

i still think people could have sub-species even reproductive speciation has flaws....especially when you can breed many different "species" together from totally different parts of the globe. for example you can breed all sorts of kingsnakes together (Lampropeltis sp.) but some may be from guatemala while others are from oregon in the USA. some take this as a clue to a common ancestor i suppose.

[quote=Ganoderma;168957]
honestly i do not understand what you mean by this: "Does the act of death create a new species?"
is it leaning towards afterlife, god, rebirth etc???[/quote]

I'm not sure what you would call it. It could be both afterlife and rebirth.

I was taught that we all have souls (consciousness?) I'm 56, and after 40 years of being agnostic, I can only speculate because, no one to date has ever came back to let me know if my soul will survive crossing into that dimension or does my present existence revert back to 'starstuff'.

If it does survive, I feel that is when I will experience my earlier equation.
Death = Matter transformed into Energy, and Thought.
A new species.

If not, then all I have to look forward to is,
Death = Matter transformed into 'starstuff', that could concievably be used later on, but not nessarily a scentient being.

Originally Posted by Ganoderma

what do you mean by i seem calous? just curious,

Actually I only meant to use this part

Originally Posted by Ganoderma

they just sit and collect water, or die....

After re-reading that paragraph I realized that you were only stating a matter of fact.

Originally Posted by Ganoderma

mammals (not counting humans as we kind of cheat) taken half way accross the globe may be harder to find their specific foods nests etc etc. but others such as rats/mice evlve rather easily...mayeb thats why we see so many variations in mice and rats, is that perhaps one thing you could look at for the beggining of a specie?

Yes, every specie has the opportunity to evolve into something new, and I would find it fascinating to observe their starting points,

See: Ducks with four legs
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/6371901.stm Newborn

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-07/07/content_4806500.htm Older

But even here, the starting point was missed because it wasn’t observed while the duck was in the egg, more to the point...While the embryo was starting to form.

And I wanted to focus on humans.

[maikeru]

Chendoh, if you want to discuss new species which are not based on current genomes, then you might be interested in synthetic biology, which holds future promise of creating new biological organisms based on novel amino acids, genetic information systems (other than DNA), RNA, etc.:

Synthetic biology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Scientific American: Reprogramming Biology

This is a field really in its infancy and one that overlaps with many other biological and chemical sciences.

Thank You,
If you squeeze a problem hard enough, the answer usually pops out.

Your leads look very promising.
Research,Research,Research......

[Rade]

Some examples of new species formed in lab experiments (that is, observing the origin of a new species):

The best-documented creations of new species in the laboratory were performed in the late 1980s. Rice and Salt bred fruit flies, Drosophila melanogaster, using a maze with three different choices such as light/dark and wet/dry. Each generation was placed into the maze, and the groups of flies which came out of two of the eight exits were set apart to breed with each other in their respective groups. After thirty-five generations, the two groups and their offspring would not breed with each other even when doing so was their only opportunity to reproduce.[6]

Diane Dodd was also able to show allopatric speciation by reproductive isolation in Drosophila pseudoobscura fruit flies after only eight generations using different food types, starch and maltose.[7] Dodd's experiment has been easy for many others to replicate, including with other kinds of fruit flies and foods.[8]

[6] Rice, W.R. and G.W. Salt (1988). "Speciation via disruptive selection on habitat preference: experimental evidence". The American Naturalist 131: 911-917.
[7] Dodd, D.M.B. (1989) "Reproductive isolation as a consequence of adaptive divergence in Drosophila pseudoobscura." Evolution 43:1308–1311.
[8] Kirkpatrick, M. and V. Ravigné (2002) "Speciation by Natural and Sexual Selection: Models and Experiments" The American Naturalist 159:S22–S35 DOI

[Ganoderma]

wanna see a cool "new man made specie"? look into the enokitake mushroom. this mushrooms was "bred" from Flammulina velutipes and is now something totally different. a very visual example of selective breeding, perhaps you could call this "assisted evolution"?

[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by Rade

Some examples of new species formed in lab experiments (that is, observing the origin of a new species) ... After thirty-five generations, the two groups and their offspring would not breed with each other even when doing so was their only opportunity to reproduce...

Wonderful piece of reporting, Rade. Thank you.

This reproduces in the lab what biologists have been suggesting for years, that some sort of physical separation of a species into two or more groups, can cause genetic speciation within perhaps scores or hundreds of generations.

For an hypothetical example, say a herd of grymphimoggins goes up into the mountains for summer grazing and down into the valleys for winter grazing. Then there are a fortuitious series of earthquakes which cause rockslides during the Autumn. The leading half of the giant herd has already descended into the valleys. The trailing half are cut off, and attempt other routes into the lowlands. Some manage to cross a river and obtain a new valley region that this species has never visited before. When spring comes, rather than recross the river (now raging) they ascend a different range of mountains.

The herd has been cut into two isolated herds. After perhaps 100 generations, the two groups have "lost genetic bonding" with each other. Even if they encounter each other, they don't smell alike, they may not look exactly alike, and they do not attempt to breed with each other. In another 100 generations, they can't interbreed even if you forced them to.

At exactly WHAT point has one species become two? This question yields no meaningful answer. Partly because our definition of "species" cannot be boiled down to exact, measurable attributes over short time scales.

[Ganoderma]

Originally Posted by Pyrotex

Wonderful piece of reporting, Rade. Thank you.
At exactly WHAT point has one species become two? This question yields no meaningful answer. Partly because our definition of "species" cannot be boiled down to exact, measurable attributes over short time scales.

or long term. i don't think mankind has even come close to agreeing on what defines a specie...

[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by Ganoderma

or long term. i don't think mankind has even come close to agreeing on what defines a specie...

I stand corrected. The singular is "specie".

Your point is well taken. The word "specie" was borrowed (or shanghaied) by taxonomists, whose intention was to catalog the natural world in a way that made sense to them. A valid goal. They approached this effort by relating natural plants, animals, and so forth, by their attributes or physical appearance. It was only well after this enterprise began (by no less than Aristotle, I think) that the taxonomic level of "specie" was once again shangaied for an additional meaning: the maximum level of relatedness (similarity) that did NOT allow for interbreeding.

Taxonomists have since quibbled endlessly on exactly what does this mean. Should it mean, "cannot interbreed under any circumstances" -- "typically cannot interbreed" -- "can produce only non-viable offspring" -- "can produce only sterile offspring" -- "can produce viable offspring, but make NO attempt to interbreed in the wild and therefore never produce offspring"

My opinion is that currently, two groups of animals are considered of different species if they make no attempt to interbreed. So, lions and tigers are two species even though we humans can force cross-breeding by artificial insemination.

[ughaibu]

Here's a page that's been linked to a few times: Observed Instances of Speciation