Re: Line breeding vs hybridization

From: "Eduardo Goncalves" edggon at hotmail.com> on 2001.06.25 at 00:35:41(6865) Dear Jim, Now you put my brain in complete confusion. We must remember that the link between cultivated and wild species is too narrow. Should we divide the species between natural species and artificial species? We have some borderline cases. Let's talk about Xanthosoma sagittifolium (L.) Schott. It was discovered (firstly by Linneus) based on plants cultivated at West Indies. It probably doesn't occur in the wild, but associated with "primitive" people. It is clearly (not so clearly) different from the other species of Xanthosoma, but it probably has its origins associated with humans. Should we consider it an artificial species, or should we consider it as a species that evolved in some kind of mutualistic relation with the human animal? The same with X. riedelianum, X. atrovirens and many other species. Even Spathiphyllum wallisii is not known in the wild. It was described based on cultivated specimens, and it was never found again, except at the closest supermarket. (Ron, correct me if I am wrong) Linnean binomials are artificial in their origin, and it will remains like this until we discover something different. A Linnean name only means a peculiar association of genes, translated to morphology in a non-linear way. We only avoid using it in cultivated plants ("very artificial species") because it would turn into a very hard task, naming all those brand new association of genes. There would be much more noise than information on it!!! Anyway, Linnaeus never thought in wild populations, because he wasn't aware about the hell of evolution. He was happy, indeed. All this confusion appeared when we started to mix up Linnaeus and evolutionary thinking. They are almost like oil and water. Good growing anyway (whatever is the name of the thing you grow), Eduardo. +More >"Canis familiaris" was never a good species entity. Linnaeus named it from >the domestic dog - not from a wild population. > > Jim Langhammer > >In a message dated 06/23/2001 1:48:39 AM Eastern Daylight Time, >StellrJ@aol.com writes: > ><< In a message dated Thu, 21 Jun 2001 4:12:03 PM Eastern Daylight Time, >Piabinha@aol.com writes: > > << in the u.s. lately, more and more scientists see that not only there's >no >distinct species as Canis familiaris, but that coyotes and wolves are also >the same species. > > Really? This sounds to me like an excuse not to conserve the wolf, >since, >after all, the coyote now lives where the wolf once did -- and never mind >that true wolves kill off and tend to extirpate coyotes. Those cattle guys >outside Yellowstone will love that. And, since some were already alleging >that the red wolf was a just a wolf-coyote hybrid anyway, well, there's >another species we no longer have to conserve. What will the anti-wolf >folks >come up with next? > > Jason Hernandez > Naturalist-at-Large >> _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Note: this is a very old post, so no reply function is available.