Re: New paper: Neanderthals were not subspecies of H. sapiens, but different species

On 26/12/2024 23:22, RonO wrote:

On 12/14/2024 12:21 PM, Ernest Major wrote:

On 14/12/2024 16:32, erik simpson wrote:

On 12/14/24 6:58 AM, Chris Thompson wrote:

https://scitechdaily.com/rewriting-evolution-study-shows- neanderthals- and-humans-were-not-the-same-species/
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Interesting paper.  It's turning out that species is a slippery concept.   If two species never interbreed, they're clearly separate. If the occasionally interbreed, they may still be separate, but how occasionally?  I'd agree that Neanderthals are separate.  It's interesting that interbreedability can go on for a surprisingly long time, hundreds of thousands of years.  Some plants are still separate species after tens of millions of years of interbreeding.
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Some plants are still interfertile after tens of millions of years of presumed isolation. For example North American and European species of lime (basswood), oak, plane, poplar, and horse chestnut (buckeye). Is that what you meant; if not I'm curious what taxa you have evidence for tens of millions of interbreeding; I would have thought that evidence for such would be hard to come by.
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Brassicaceae should count.  Many hybrids are viable and have produced new crop plants.  Think of broccoflower (broccoli and cauliflower).

Brassica oleracea is a cultigen which is only a few thousand years old. broccoli (italica) and romanesco broccoli/cauliflower (botrytis) are sister groups within oleracea (or the latter nested in the former). I would have guessed that they had only been separated for several hundred years, but the literature puts their origin at around 2,000 years ago.
Broccoflower doesn't appear to be a broccoli/cauliflower hybrid. Instead it is a name applied to green-headed cauliflowers (cauliflowers come in white, green, orange and red/purple) and to romanesco broccoli. The line of evolution may be kale -> broccoli -> romanesco -> cauliflower.

 They wanted to put restrictions on making them roundup resistant because so many weed plants interbreed with them that the resistance was likely going to get into the weeds.

There are weedy forms of Brassica oleracea and Brassica rapa in Britain, and Brassica napus readily goes feral. Beyond these hybridisation with other species of subtribe Brassicinae is well known - though the apparent tendency to wide hybridisation may be an illusion caused by extensive study (wheat shows the same phenomenon), and other groups of plants would show the same if studied to the same depth.

 Ron Okimoto
 

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alias Ernest Major