What is a Species? Nobody Knows!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 พ.ย. 2024
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What is a species? This might seem like a simple question with a simple answer, but if you dig a little deeper, you will quickly discover that it is anything but. Explaining just what defines a species has baffled biologists for generations. So let's explore the concept of a species, and see if we can't figure out the answer to this surprisingly challenging question.
#clintsreptiles #species #evolution
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Ungulate phylogeny please
I wish you were president!
'Species' should be defined as a RACE POOL - where some or all races can breed with some or all races therein.
0:11 Common mistake. Those are bones.
Common mistake. Those are rocks created from bones via processes like permineralization.
@@Jossandoval Common mistake. Those are pixels on the screen.
Common mistake. Those are the minds interpretation of the signal created by the eyes interaction with photons released by the electrochemical action of pixels
Those are all boney fish actually 😂😂
@@stoatystoat174 Ceci n'est pas une tigre.
The more I learn about biology the more I realize that a LOT of disagreements and controversy about it are largely just semantics issues, because nature doesn’t care that you want to be able to define things and sort them into little boxes. It’s a chaotic contradictory mess and at the end of the day it just is what it is no matter what you call it. I think there’s something kind of beautiful about that.
A ton of debate boils down to being more about what a person thinks a word should mean or how a word should be used, than it does the nature of the thing itself.
As a linguistically inclined person; you've hit the nail on the head! While semantics (that is: meaning) is real, it is also context-dependent. You can say it makes sense to classify a dog a a bony fish to have a consistent tree structure taxonomy in the context of science. I'd say sure. But if a kid points at a dog and says "fish!" I'll tell it "no, that's a dog", because in the context of everyday use that is *not* a useful way to think about dogs. More importantly, it's just not the way people think about dogs and fish, and what people think something means in the current context *is* what it means.
A ton of debate is people denying grey and saying everything is black or white. No definition of species is possible that matches reality.
@@stephenolan5539 Viable spawn is pretty good.
I think it's because there's a variety of reasons why organisms might unable to mate with each other. With dragonflies, it's often because their genitals are just the wrong shape. They try to mate, and fail.
I wouldn't say it's inherently contradictory; nature must be self-consistent, the contradictions we think we see are a result of, as you pointed out, our attempts at systematizing it
Thank you, Clint. I've been asking this question for years and never got a satisfactory answer. That "Thats okay cause nobody really knows" was what I was always looking for
Exactly! Some questions don't have neat answers, or any objectively "true" answers at all. We just have to accept that it feels unsatisfactory. (And where possible, work for an even better answer!)
well, you've got to remember that the whole notion of a species is one made up. It's not real. It's like the whole Continent question. It depends who you ask. It's pretty meaningless.
In general if someone states they 'know' something they are more than likely not a scientist, especially not one that works on biology. Scientists almost always will qualify an answer with "as far as we know" or something t othe like since science is always being built on.
As when Data tells Capt Picard in star trek. "The beginning of wisdom is saying, I don't know."
@@Hurricayne92Well taxonomy is more semantics than science, so we create the definitions and it's only about consensus... not much science here, although we try to make it somehow connected to science to make it a bit more objective so it gets finicky
Props to my High School AP biology teacher (Thanks, Mr. N!) who taught us to identify a species from a phylogenetic perspective! Also, I love that Clint kinda takes a dig at his own MA--most people get a degree in something and then forever treat it as the ONLY standard for analysis. That he branched out and can see weaknesses and strengths in a variety of approaches is just further proof that he's a scientist worth emulating.
I am a student of zoology doing my masters in zoology, from Assam, India . I recently got to know the different concepts of species, different definition of what a species is by various previous biologists and experts and my professor said that the accurate one is the modern definition of species as clint just mentioned as biological species concept.
But now as I have watched the video it is very fascinating to know how diverse, inconsistent and messy life really is, not just an mathematical formula or algorithm through which everything can be explained. Whenwe conclude that we know something for sure, some new studies pop up and completely destroys our previous conclusions. Showing us that how difficult ( perhaps impossible) it is to define and catagorize things in nature.
Alice roberts my fave anthropologist once said something along the lines of, "You can't neatly categorise biology, we keep trying to put it all in nice little boxes and we are constantly finding it breaks out of those boxes the more we learn" 😂
Maybe to believe you can neatly categorise biology is to not understand how complex and amazing biology is and maybe a little arrogance mixed in there too 😅
Fellow student in your general vicinity here, how do you find the resources in that country to be regarding our subject?
@@Nukariafully agreed
@@WilliamButcher26566 please elaborate your question ?
@@068himangshukakati6 just, do you think India has good resources for zoology people
As a biologist in molecular evolution, I usually see life as a blotchy continuum. I start by viewing each unit of DNA (or similar molecules) package as an individual. If you on a multi-dimensional plane, plot a dot for each individual that exists, you find that most individuals possible do not exist. However, if you zoom out enough, you see a cluster of very similar individuals forming a blob. For simplicity, we usually call that blob a species if there is a significant lack of individuals between this blob and the next. That is just because it is convenient to talk about a common name for a group of individuals. However, this is not always constant, e.g. in bacteria, those blobs change all the time and it makes it very hard to keep your species list up to date. You can extent this down to cells within an individual or kingdoms or even organisms not using DNA whatsoever.
TLDR; We use species because it is convenient for our view of our surroundings.
This comment is top tier.
There are organisms that don't use DNA??? Tell me more please!!
@@conlon4332 The one I know of is viruses, which use RNA instead of DNA. Or at least some of them do. 🤷
Oh my! You sound just like Clint!!😅😊
🤯
Hi Clint, I'm 13 and I LOVE your videos! You inspire me so much, and have piqued my interest in the reptile hobby! I'm about to get my first ball python this Christmas, yay! You and snake discovery have really helped me learn more about reptiles and animals, and helped me choose which one fits me best! One day, I hope to become a cool biologist like you, it's my dream!! I hope you have a good day, and continue to inspire others!
I found Clint when looking for the best pet snake for me, and ball pythons are amazing. I hope you enjoy your new pet.
@ thanks! I just got him today, did you ever get a snake?
Not to be a jerk, just help because you're 13 and I would've liked to have known at 13, it's "piqued my interest".
@ no it's totally fine, I will!
Ah this made me smile, I’m sure Clint would appreciate your message.
When I was in my teens, I liked physics/astronomy. After putting in a good amount of work I became employed as a junior physicist at a research institute. I’m really happy doing what I do and it’s weird to think I am where I am currently. Keep working towards to whatever peaks your interest. I think the hard work is worth it!
There was one key Tiger you left out of the intro, the golfing one.
Haha they need to add him
You beat me to it!
The biggest problem with that Tiger is that it's part plant, and plant speciation is so much worse than animal
My cereal boy Tony too!
That Tiger was too hard for Clint to find, it hid in the Woods.
I can't believe Clint didn't use a pug skull as an argument against the morphological concept.
To be fair, pugs are as unnatural as it gets
@@M_Alexander They are, which will make their bones' location in a future philogyny a puzzle for future paleontologists.
Yeah, it's not like wolves are the only species with widespread morphological polymorphism of members.
@@M_Alexander pugs are an abomination that shouldn't exist
This is a very good way to inform people about a basic evolutionary concept that evolutionary biologists of this generation have come to understand: That what we call a 'species' is an arbitrary label we use to divide up blocks of individuals that share a history written into their DNA, when in reality the living world is just made up of clusters of individuals going about their business, joined by a shared ancestry that may be close or distant. Those individuals that are similar enough to one another are able to mate and produce offspring least theoretically if they were given the opportunity, and those individuals that are too different cannot, and it's not an either/or. Rather, there are degrees of likelihood of success in breeding and producing viable offspring.
The category 'species' is a black and white term being fitted onto a world composed of shades of grey.
I have said it before, thank you for your work on explaining science to the world, to clearly state that science is supplying the "best observation that we have , today" , not "this is the answer".
Asking what a species is (or basically any genetics definition) is like asking whether mathematics was invented or discovered. Both are human constructs designed to help us better understand the world, and they are typically damn good models. However, that doesn’t mean nature will conform to our limited models at every level of detail. At a certain level of nitpicking, almost every model breaks down, but this does not mean that the model is not practically useful besides these specialized scenarios.
It's a similar question, but they're not _very_ alike, as mathematics is entirely abstract, so whichever philosophical belief you choose doesn't really impact how you use it. Also, the point of asking whether mathematics is discovered or invented is that unlike you some people do believe mathematics is innate to the universe, and not a construct - that is called platonism and it has a lot of believers when you dig into foundational mathematics.
It's different with biology, because when you impose those strict definitions there you're gonna run into real challenges that force you to redefine things. With math you can kinda just assume anything you want and roll with it, it doesn't need input from the outside world to work
Are you proponent of nominalistic species concept?
@@oiytd5wughoI agree with you, except the part of assuming "anything you want." While you do get to assume anything you want, your assumptions cannot lead to contradictions.
There are still math cranks proving how to square the circle. In my own experience, I had initial discomfort with the concept of accepting different sizes of infinite sets.
Paragraph
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Whew, hope that came off ok.
"anything you want" might be talking about algebra ie X=
As a proponent of the Phylogenetic Species Concept myself, I think it's biggest strength and short coming is that it bases its definition of species by the end result of an organism's place on the Phylogenetic Tree, but not strictly defining the criteria needed to get to that point. The concept Speciation is real, but is generally far too fluid for the prior species concepts to fit into their very specific definitions into a larger schema outside of their specific field of study. So the strength of the Phylogenetic Species Concept is that it doesn't adhere to any of those strict criteria and just says "if it's at this location of the tree, it is its own species". But that is also it's biggest weakness. Different fields have their own criteria of determining what is at the end of that tree with what method. Different philosophies within that field weigh their different methodologies differently I'm significance. Each individual holds a level of bias of which methodology holds how much weight and how much difference adds up to a different species. PSC doesn't kill the other concepts, it just provides a way to collaboratively use all those different concepts and methodologies to come to conclusions, but it often leads to major disagreements. Look at the lumpers vs splitters in Palaeontology.
Being someone who studied undergrad microbiology and digged a tiny bit deeper into this question through textbooks and pubmed, I'm like "oh no, not this question". From what I understand in the microbial sciences we've had different definitions over time based on technological advances especially in genetic sequences, in the old days we used to classify species based on colony and culture characteristics, biochemistry, microscopy, and medical relevance (still useful operationally in medical labs). Then molecular biology happened and now the entire phylogeny was upturned by rRNA sequencing, and researchers started assigning species based on ssu rRNA sequence similairty and now with cheaper whole genome sequencing they do with the whole genome (95-99% similarity from what I've seen based on how good and accessible the tech has gotten), but if you apply that species definition to us (humans) then I believe us, chimps and all the great apes would be one species. In the field people just seem to use the ad-hoc "operational taxonomic unit" (OTU) to avoid the whole species debate.
"Two skeletons in the act of mating..."
I guess one might say "they're boning".
Ba dum tss!
Hu-Ha!
Take my hate-like and get out
Bad jokes are the best jokes.
Literally chucked at this - good one!
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I was going to say it would have been nice to see the phylogenetic definition applied to the edge cases mentioned previously, but I assume that's for the folks paying the bills. No hard feelings. Ok, maybe a few but... ;) Cheers!
Explaining that there is no perfect species concept and why has become one of my hobbies with friends. My favorite example to add to the salamander one is grizzly bears and polar bears, since we have a recorded example of interbreeding with fertile offspring in the wild - a step beyond ligers and tigons which have only been produced in captivity as we know of. But since with global warming grizzly and polar bears' habitats are overlapping again, there was a case between 2010 and 2014 where it was discovered that one polar bear female had four cubs with a grizzly bear, and then one of her daughters had four cubs with another grizzly bear, making 75% grizzly 25% polar hybrids. Considering Polar Bears and Grizzly bears have different morphology, as well as different diets and hunting methods, it's hard for anyone to argue them the same species, and yet they can create viable offspring in the wild.
There's actually a theory that polar bears have ceased to exist in the past and re-evolved from grolar bears multiple times.
Wolves(including dogs) and coyotes would be another example. Also plants do that a lot.
@@pumaconcolor2855 Also, H. sapiens and neanderthals might well have simply hybridized back into one species.
The fakeout outro, “garbage ideas”, the extras 😂😂 what a good video to wake up to
I love this. I always hate when my 7th graders ask this question because it takes the rest of the period to go over it.
I think it is important to acknowledge that, while the definition of a species may seem like a purely academic debate, it is a debate with real-world impacts. What we choose to conserve is almost always determined based on our understanding of what a species is, and whether or not that specific species happens to be endangered. There are numerous instances where a "species" is either split or lumped, and suddenly is at a vastly different priority for conservation than before. For example, all owl monkeys (genus Aotus) used to be one species which was not endangered, however now eleven species are recognized- with their IUCN statuses ranging from least concern to endangered.
The real question, in my opinion, shouldn't be "what is a species?", but instead "how do we ensure that we are not ignoring real biodiversity (e.g., overlumping) and/or focusing on fake biodiversity (e.g., oversplitting) in the realm of conservation?"
So a conservation based species concept :)
Sometimes the right answer to "Are these the same species," is, "Hard to say, ask again in 200,000 years." Speciation is a process over time, and until populations have finished diverging to the point of reaching a threshold of clearly being different species, you can't really tell if a given level of variability and isolation in a population is going ultimately result in a split or not. "They might be in the process of speciating," isn't a particularly clear or definite answer, but sometimes it's the correct one.
4:08 “it turns out that life well uhh finds a way”
Hello my cultured friend.
Aw man, I love a Big Question
As interesting as it is, it's more a question of what to do (in defining a concept of “species” that doesn't objectively exist outside our minds) rather than what fundamental aspect of reality to learn. That's not to say we don't learn deep stuff about nature in the process though
No matter how we define species, there will always be the borderline line examples where we don't know if they are the same or different species.
That's just how evolution work, there is, no matter the definition used, species on the borderline of speciation.
Poison Dart Frogs are a good example of difficulty classifying species.
If you look at Dendrobates tinctorus (not the only dart species, but one of the most dramatic examples), there are dozens of locales with dramatically different color morphology. Each locale is consistent within it's population, but can breed successfully with others and produces completely viable and fertile offspring. You could probably make a decent argument that the locales are subspecies, or are at the evolutionary start of the process of speciation since they are geographically distinct and have very little gene flow between them, but, currently, we still classify them as one species.
Nothing more fickle than frog fashion trends!
I think the best definition is one that is useful for giving certain information. The genetic definition is useful for figuring out the history of a species. Morphology helps you visibly ID a species when coming across one. Mating helps you know the future of a species. Ecological helps you know how a species affects other species. All of these combined help you can a rounded view on what a certain species does and how they differ from others.
Yes you have to choose the right tool for the job.
This reminds me of the question of what is a language and what is a dialect. The mountain-dwelling salamanders especially remind me of Dutch and German. A person from Amsterdam who hasn't studied German probably won't understand a Berliner and vice versa. But if you were to travel from Amsterdam to Berlin, and in each settlement along the way you recorded someone saying something and then played that recording to the people in the next settlement, at no point would you hit a clear barrier where people from one town don't understand the way the previous townsfolk talk. And yet, the first recording would be in Dutch and the last in German.
I've studied German and find Dutch to be as intelligible to me as English spoken in Scottish or Australian dialects sound to me as an American English speaker.
Maybe we're just really broad-minded about what counts as English in the English-speaking world lol
@@naomistarlight6178what really helps is having a common written language. There is a huge amount of variation in spoken English, but standard written English is remarkably consistent. Many English speakers don't pronounce a syllable-final r (non-rhotic dialects), but if we got rid of the syllable-final r in spelling, most North American, Irish, and Scottish English speakers would be extremely confused. Ca = car ?
This is interesting to me because biology and philosophy are special interests of mine. And, in my studying of philosophy, I recently listened to a lecture on the Greek pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, who is most famous for the saying "you never step in the same river twice", because he believed that all that was real was change. Or, "becoming" exists but "being" is an illusion.
That's exactly the problem with defining a spieces, or indeed putting things into categories and using words at all.
11:30 I'm surprised you didn't tie the weaknesses of the morphological species concept back to tigers. As I understand it, lion and tiger skeletons are notoriously difficult to distinguish from one another. Given just the bones, as if they were fossil species, it might be reasonable to classify them as one species
Once again here to say.. "We're into this sorta thing." Thanks for all your hard work Clint and Crew!
What I notice on Reddit,especially in id'ing snakes is people ask what "breed" a random wild snake is. rather than what species is it.
might stem from people thinking snake is a species. in animal name games i dont see people say gartersnake. they say snake, or shark, or deer. most people have no clue that these are not species
Same with parrots. People who have dogs or cats, when asking about a bird pet ask what breed it is, like they would ask a dog or a cat's breed. People assume animals kept as pets are separated into breeds
I study linguistics and the salamander example reminded me of the question of "what is a dialect and what is a language?"
Something thats often brought up there is the concept of 'mutual intelligibility', i.e. if two people can communicate with each other, they're speaking the same language, but it still may be different dialects. But there are also dialect continua, where if you travel from one end of the continuum to the other, step by step the language might not be so different, but two people from either end won't be able to communicate. Like the salamanders that can each mate with the ones nearby but not with the ones on the other side of the valley.
The best solution (to my knowledge) that linguists have come up with for this problem is a quote by Max Weinreich: "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy." And I think it may be similar here (but probably less influenced by politics lol). It doesn't really matter to the universe, there are no inherent categories. There are animals that are closer related to one another than to others. There are animals sharing more unique features with each other than with others.
Regarding the phylogenetic approach I think that that gets us the closest to the truth, but like you said: it tends to "oversplit". Maybe the truth IS actually in this so-called oversplitting.
I think categories like 'species' or 'language' aren't there to be truthful, but just to help us conceptualize the world around us, because otherwise we would just have a bunch of individual animals that might be able to reproduce or not and a bunch of individual people that might be able to communicate or not.
But that means that there can never be the 'perfect' category that is both 100% truthful AND 100% useful (whatever that means lol). There always has to be a tradeoff, depending on what purpose the category should serve.
@16:05 and plants. Botanical systematists have to deal with all sorts of chicanery when dealing with infering a phylogeny. Horozontal gene transfer is annoying, but so is polyploidy, and diploidization. And it's not just in seed plants. Free-sporing plants like ferns and lycophytes are notorious for this kind of thing.
Dividing continuous data in to discrete categories. Clint meets quantum mechanics!
I had a similar thought lol
The tiger becomes a species when observed, but when unobserved it becomes a wave
@@MajorTomFisher underated comment
@@MajorTomFisherSo the stripes are actually interference patterns. 😂
@@MajorTomFisher, call it the Springville Interpretation of speciation.
As my favourite anthropologist alice roberts once said, something along the lines of.
Biology is a messy science, it's not nice and mathematical like say physics. We try to put things in these neatly defined category boxes in biology like we do with other sciences, and its constantly breaking out of those boxes 😂 you can't neatly categorise biology because its so messy and wonderful.
To think it's possible to box up biology into nice neat boxes, is to not understand biology and how complex it is 😅
I went to school for anthropology, with a focus in linguistics. Linguistics has this same problem, of “what is a language.” Clearly, languages exist. But at what point do they become distinct? The equivalent to “being able to mate” in the species argument is the equivalent to the concept of mutual intelligibility, meaning if two speakers can understand each other. This sounds great, but begins to fall apart on further inspection. I speak Spanish, and I just spent last night talking with one of my Italian friends. I was speaking Spanish and he was speaking Italian. We both understood each other almost completely. On the other hand, I have a distinct memory of a Jamaican man and an Indian man struggling to understand eachother’s accents at my job once. I could understand both of them, speaking English, and they could understand me, but they could not understand each other! Does that mean these forms of English are different languages? Does that make Italian and Spanish the same language?
After years of study, I came to the same frustrating conclusion. That there’s really no way to make a hard category. I think this likely extends to many, many fields of science, which is so interesting to me and shows the limits of our ability to understand the world comoletelyz
*completely. I want to give another interesting example. In China, everyone speaks Chinese, right? 90% of the population does at least. But which Chinese? If judged by the same standards of mutual intelligibility as the Romance languages, there are about 5-7 different languages that could all be called Chinese. But politically, there’s never been any reason to assert them as separate languages.
On the other side of the coin, there is the Persian language. Or, in Iran, Farsi. They effectively speak the same language with very very minor tweaks in Afghanistan and Tajikistan too. Except in Afghanistan it’s called Dari and in Tajikistan it’s called Tajik. Are these 3 separate languages, just because of the political barriers?
@@natashatercera8536 This is a nice comment. Languages develop many times in similar ways to biological species and follow similar laws of evolution, to a point that as biology researchers in the past we had studied how languages change and adapt to different times/places to get ideas about how living organisms may adapt too. So, those linguists who say sometimes that "language is a living organism" make an excellent point maybe far more factual than they even might think themselves.
Regarding your example about what is language, I would say that in the example of the two people who couldn't understand each other's accent and localizations, that is similar to species recognition as a sexual partner. Sometimes closely related species would be able to give fertile offspring biologically/genetically but they just don't recognize each other as a potential partner as their mating rituals etc have become different over time. But if you had your friends write down what they wanted to say, that would circumvent a huge part of the differences and they would most likely be able to communicate proving that they speak the same language. The equivalent in biology would be 2 members who belong to the same species phylogenetically but have accumulated enough diversion that are marginally a different biological species.
@@natashatercera8536there been plenty of times that I had to translate something I said from Cretan greek to standard greek.
Hey Clint!!!! Undergrad student here majoring in ecology and evolutionary biology while minoring in environmental science. You rock!!! Though extremely far fetched, being a student of yours has always been a dream of mine!!! Thank you for being such an inspiration in academia 🙏🙏
My favourite is the knowledge that brown bears and polar bears are different species (?) but can get healthy cubs that in turn are able to get offspring.
Neanderthals and humans were different species, and they produced viable offspring too.
I remember a video talking about a modern Neanderthal skull found in Europe. I wish I could cite my source, but that was years ago.
Is it hybridization? Thats cool
@@IndigestionMaster well, in a way. Polar bears are so closely related to Brown bears that they genetically are more closer to Brown bears than some Brown bears are to each other.
Which really makes me think they are more of a subspecies of brown bear than a separate species.
@@davidborgstrom oh cool!!!
0:55 Hi Clint! I'd love more more videos like this! I just learned about speciation this week in my grade 11 Biology class. Surprise, I decided to go back to school with the goal of being a veterinary practitioner for exotics, at age 30 no less, and it all started right here about 6 years ago.
I had never taken biology classes, however I became very interested in your Ball Python phylogeny videos, and after some deliberation, and a few consultations, it was determined that my excellent grades in Advanced Functions, Data Management & Calculus would be an asset.
I've been back in school for about a week and a half now, but I am expecting to be able to take my midterm by Friday (no joke, I'm acing my key materials). So any amount of biology information I can absorb passively is a massive boon to me, despite the fact that I learn best by reading & orating.
The ecological species concept is similar to the astrophysical concept of what a metal is: If it consists of atoms and it isn't hydrogen, it's a metal.
This works for them because they don't actually worry about conductivity or electronegativity or any other properties of what a chemist would call a metal.
Helium is also not considered a metal, but all the other elements are, including oxygen and neon.
@sydhenderson6753 right, thanks!
Clint, you gave me a perfect thing to argue about during Thanksgiving this year! PERFECT
This is a question I ask myself every day as I work on my worldbuilding projects with fantasy creatures. It is undeniably, indisputably, an absolute blast to think about all the time haha.
Clint, I've been watching you for years! the first minutes of the What is a species? part are honestly one of your best yet.
It literally made my brain feel itchy from the processing 😂
Herrerasaurus is over here wringing its claws together, saying, "Put me in a phylogenetic tree, I dare you."
I was a music performance major in college, but did take a Wolf Behavior course. It was mostly about the psychology and behaviors of wolves, but we did explore some species differences and how they function ecologically. It's so fun yet strange to see how many different varieties of canids there are, biologically, with different ecological niches, divergent or convergent evolution, and where they sat in their own part of the phylogenetic tree. What you said here expands on what the professor and I discussed in the course, it's such a fun discussion despite the lack of a concrete answer, and how these different systems can be explored through different already known animal species makes room for so many nuances. Lovely video! 😊
3:57 this sentence right here is a scary place to be, but its where my brain likes to live
I like the ecological species concept _within_ the context of ecology. I don't think it should be seen as competing with the other definitions. What I mean is: within a certain well-defined environment, the set of unambiguous species tends to line up precisely with niches. This is because two different species cannot occupy the exact same niche indefinitely, as one will eventually drive the other to extinction (or absorption into its genepool in the case of reproductively compatible ones, like what Homo sapiens did to neanderthals), and so it sheds light on how speciation works and is ultimately tied to ecology. Now of course that just shifts the problem of ambiguity and where to draw lines to the definitions of “same niche” and “same environment”, but hey, it's something :)
And if you don't like it as a definition of “species”, I would argue that the concept is still valuable in itself, and you can always just specify “ecological species” to be clear
Perfect timing Clint! This was this week's subject in the taxonomy classes I'm taking for my master's degree.
The Ecological Species Concept, as I was taught it, is exactly the reverse of how it was explained here. It's not used to determine what is the same species so much as it is to determine different species. The best example I have is the Polar bear and the Grizzley bear. They can interbreed, and produce fertile offspring. However, a Grizzley is an omnivore dwelling in mountain forests, and the Polar bear is a hypercarnivore in an arctic Marine environment. This is how the Ecological Species concept comes into play. They are Genetically interfertile, and morphologically similar, but because they fill completely different ecological niches they are different species. Now a Grizzley bear and a black bear do not breed with each other, so they are different species, even thought hey occupy the same ecological niche.
Again, it's used to determine what's a different species, not what is the same species.
This is exactly how I was taught as well. The ecological species concept isn't saying "X animal and y animal share no phylogenetic history, but they've evolved to do the same things in their environment so they're the same species". It's saying "sure g animal and h animal could reproduce successfully together if the opportunity arose, but they live different lifestyles in different environments and should be distinct species as a result."
Saying different ecological niches are used to determine different species is the same thing as saying the same ecological niche is used to determine the same species, no? If Polar Bears and Grizzly Bears had the same ecological niche, you'd probably say they're the same species?
@DJFracus well... if they can interbreed generationally and share a majority of morphological traits (both true) AND they shared a niche.... would they not be the same species at that point?
@@kodaukumae9442 Yes that's what I said. Are you agreeing with me? It's the same thing as what he was taught, not the "reverse" of what he was taught?
@DJFracus oh i think i see. The difference is an inclusion check vs exclusion check. The ecological species model checks for qualities that would exclude an organism from a species, not qualities that would make them "the same as" a species they weren't previously classified with. It's kind of like how we treat dogs and wolves as distinct species despite the fact that one evolved from the other and the fact that they can successfully interbreed. They're both canis lupus, but we have excluded dogs from the broader category of wolf because of their environment. We wouldn't suddenly place hyenas in the wolf category despite their niche similarities to wolves, because the model functions off of exclusions not inclusions. Idk if that makes sense
I remember that several dinosaur species were re-classified as simply being juveniles of known species.
For current living species I still think that the "breedable or not" rule is the best we got, even if there are exceptions.
This channel is what made phylogenetics my special interest.
I wouldn't have been surprised if you'd listed the Tiger Nut plant at the start there as well!
you covered this complex topic so cleanly, such a fun video
Another flaw in phylogenetics is that it includes all of the flaws from every other method of defining species:
As you said, it can use morphology, genetics, ecology, et cetera.
In order to decide what the clade is, you must use one of the OTHER systems.
And to the extent that you use any of those, it is subject to the flaws of that methodology.
Thanks for the videos, Clint and team. The natural world is so diverse and wonderful and I love learning new ways to reason about it.
I swear I was thinking about this yesterday. I was thinking about 'When does a species go extict?' One answer is if the whole species dies, but what if they don't die per se but have descendants that evolve into new species that survive?
And what if they hybridise with a related, more numerous species so that there are no individual descendants with their original distinctive combination(s) of genes, but all of those genes still exist separately within individuals of the new hybrid population?
@@terryhunt2659 A very salient question coming from a Homo sapiens with Homo neanderthalensis genes
Your comment made me think of the Cycad Encephalartos woodii. There was only a single male specimen ever found and several offshoots are still living but not in the wild. Is it extinct?
Hypothetically, I suppose it could potentially be crossbred with other cycad species. But even if it were bred, presumably it would be through human intervention, so I don't know if it could be considered "rescued." (I don't know how common Cycads are in the world overall. They all might be on the verge of extinction.)
Thank you for covering this topic, I always thought about the different concepts of a species I learned in college when you explained phylogeny. It's really important to teach biology as a continuum rather than boxes, as you said. I'm currently reading 'The Ancestor's Tale' by Richard Dawkins and it makes me love biology more than ever before !
Dear Clint, there is no wrong way to say niche. There is no wrong way to speak any language, as long as you are able to be understood by peers. However; I do believe you could have a more informed stance of the funny etymology of the word “niche”.
Undeniably“niche” is a borrowed word from French and has retained its spelling. “Niche” in French is used to describe a recess or small nook. This meaning is derived from the word “nicher”, which means to nest. Following along the branches of the Latin tree, by which all Romance languages share a common ancestor, the root of all modern romance words for nest; “nidus”. From which we derive the French “nid” and the Spanish/Italian “nido”. “Nidus” being the common root became Old French’s “nige”, conjugated to “nigier”. Then corrupted to “nichier”, later becoming “nicher”, and finally modern “niche”.
Historically Americans have pronounced the controversial word as “nitch”, likely as a misinterpretation of the spelling. This mistake could have been made very early on in the adoption of the word as early as the 1600s, but likely was made more recently. According to Oxford dictionary, niche has been in use for ecology only as early as the year 1910.
All language is based on the accruement of small mistakes and an ever changing culture. The fact that Americans and some other English speaking peoples say “nitch” is not historically wrong and is not a mistake in the modern day. “Neesh” is actually the less common way to say “niche” in America and is increasing in popularity every year. This is likely due to more frequent exposure to French and a better understanding of how to pronounce French words.
While there is no wrong answer, I’ll give you mine. “Neesh” is how I choose to say it. Until in English we change the spelling, I can’t be this informed and willfully mispronounce a French word with French spelling. Another personal belief of mine is that scientists tend to say “nitch” as a way to help differentiate the scientific use of “niche” from art and music “neeshes”. It puts them in a more scientific out group, as the “nitch” pronunciation could have easily come from scientist mispronouncing a French word in a French paper on ecology. I’d need to do some serious research to find that though. I hope you read this Clint, love your channel.
Hope this puts the “nitch” vs “neesh” comments to rest.
To me the etymological discussion is similar to the species definition discussion: Perfection is not possible, and prescription is only of limited use and has a high chance of causing problems in the long run. So it is better to be aware that you're using an imperfect method.
@@bramvanduijn8086 Exactly!! It’s all a subjective choice no matter how you choose to draw your lines.
In the uk the French pronunciation is used. I have not heard it pronounced as “nitch” here.
@@HypnoNett That makes sense as the “nitch” use originated in American. Though I would not be surprised if some dialects of English in the UK say “nitch” via “convergent evolution”. According to Oxford dictionary “nitch” is an accepted pronunciation in British English.
I answered someone's question about the definition of species on your last video. Of course I didnt know you had a much more entertaining answer in the works! Great video.
"You have entered the uncomfortably uncertain position of the highly informed." Nice!
Aaaahhhh! Clint! That was the most exasperating and interesting video all at the same time.
This is one of my favorite, if not my favorite video of yours! Keep up the great work!!
There are two sides of the debate: Paleontologists assigning two nearly-identical animals into different genera and Zoologists lumping the most unrelated animals into the same genus.
Older paleoanthropologists: Pithecanthropus, Meganthropus, Sinanthropus, etc.
Ernst Mayr or Milford Wolpoff: Homo erectus populations from lower to middle paleolithic East Asia. And Homo erectus is a chronospecies but may not be a distinct phylospecies from Homo sapiens.
Newer paleoanthropologists: Homo erectus.
I was just trying to explain the value of phylogenetics to my friend the other day. Really appreciate these Clint!
The guitar riff at the start always signals to me it’s gonna be a good day ❤
The thing is also, that phylogenetics are the most unbiased way to make a family tree. Look and morphology are always subjective
"If dey look difer'ant, dey's a differ'hant spees'hes."
~99% of species classification
I like the thumbnail for this one. I initially thought it was a little click-baity but it isn't a literal description of the contents of the video. It's trying to make me think a bit more, and more critically. Thanks for the gentle push.
Clint, did you know that recent genetic testing shows old and new world vultures ARE more closely related?
They are both within the accipitriformes, eagles and hawks.
New World vultures are no longer considered (close) relatives of storks.
They do belong to different clades within accipitriformes, but are still pretty closely related. overall.
Only some authorities placed them in the Ciconiiformes (Stork-forms) with storks and herons, most didn't. Placing them in there own order Cathartiformes, not closely associated with either the birds of prey or the storks and herons. Then based on recent DNA data they was placed as the most basal group within the clade Accipitrimorphae (Hawk-morph). So the order Cathartiformes (Purifier-forms) being a sister order to the order Accipitriformes (Hawk-forms).
@zebedeemadness2672 Yes, they was.
To me phylogenetics biggest downside is some arbitrary classifications and definitions that otherwise hinge on semantics. Evolving out of a clade, while technically useful, hinges on the word used to simply define that clade as to weather it comes off as significant. Instead of a fish, call it a Flurbnirp, and you can keep fish as a specific morphology instead of rigidly stating everything has to be a fish lol. I'm not explaining this well but it's early for me, great vid as usual Clint!
1:00 had no business being so funny 😂
You and your team post my family's FAVORITE videos on TH-cam. We really appreciate all the information and the opportunity to learn!!! Just wanted to say thank you - You guys are making a big difference in the way we see the world and the way we want to be involved with it.
The modern understanding is that it was never a "saber-toothed tiger", that was always the wrong term.
They're not closely related to tigers, at all.
Extinct animals don't really need common names, so there genus name Smilodon (Knife-tooth) is perfect for them.
@@zebedeemadness2672 Yes, I'm talking about the "sabre tooth tiger" common moniker, started by paleontologists.
Something tells me he didn't think marsupial tigers, tiger sharks, tiger beetles, Aspidoscelis tigris, or tiger salamanders are closely related to tigers either, so I don't think him including "saber-toothed tigers" in that list was implying that.
If you're referring to him saying we don't know if they could reproduce with tigers, what you're talking about doesn't necessarily tell us whether they could. Machairodontinae diverged from living cats around 20 million years ago which is 5 times less time than how long ago alligator gars and longnose gars did, and yet those gars can produce viable hybrid offspring. Whether two different species can reproduce depends on whether different reproductive evolutionary pathways cause prezygotic or postzygotic barriers to develop, which is obviously correlated with relatedness but not fully dependent on it.
@@DJFracus Yeah, but I wanted to point it out, because for decades people used "tiger" as if it were related to tigers.
Definitely one of the best videos made on this topic. Very nicely explained and well understood while still being scientifically analytical, well done
14:40 Surely you were describing your local Bigfoot. 100% chance.
I was recently in the Grant Museum of Zoology in London U.K. and it was fascinating to see the skulls of various Seals and Bears 🐻 🦭 next to each other, particularly because i was remembering from one of your earlier videos how closely related they are to each other. If you were guessing without reading labels the Fur Seal skull looked more like a bear than the Polar bear skull
🦭 🦭 seals of approval for yourselves and the Grant Museum
@15:00 Insinuate is misspelled.
I love all your videos. But this one was super interesting to me. I love the overview of biology type videos.
I have never heard someone talk about a topic so much but explain so little.
The way you explain the phylogenetic species concept makes it sound like just tautology. "A species is a thing that is where we put species on the tree of life".
What actual substance are you measuring in order to derive a conclusion?
I am assuming that it's a thing way too complex to explain in a video of this format, like you don't have to go into the genetic analysis, that's fine. But how does "We define them as the tip of the tree of life" help for a further understanding, when you have to know what they are IN ORDER TO put them there.
More to the point, how does this help analysis of extinct species? What are you actual measuring and testing to label them?
More to the point, "the tip of the tree of life" is not species. We have plenty of concepts that go below the species level that can classify groups or populations. Sub-species, Breed, Morphs, Race, heck even family, (but we are delving more into sociology here now).
A species is hard to define because, despite what Clint stated in this video, it's not a "real" thing, until we do have a truly universally applicable concept for it. Humans like to make labels for things like this and put ideas into categories, but nature simply says no.
Oh I felt that when you said ecology meetings make you question why you're alive. I started my undergrad degree as an ecologist, barely got through 1 upper level ecology class and fled for the biology program.
I love that you have a nitch for neesh.
lols (took me a bit to get it) 😂
Like I often say, species definitions are rules of thumb at best, and only exist to make things simpler for us. Like with everything that we try to categorize, the closer we look, the more exceptions we have to make and the flimsier our definitions become. And whenever someone refers to "basic biology", you often have to remind them that you're not supposed to stop at the basics.
According to anecdotes from keepers, Lampropeltis, Pituophis and Pantherophis can produce fertile offspring. Their ranges overlap as well, so hybridization may happen naturally across genera, not just between species. When I was still in the reptile hobby, someone was producing hybrids that crossed entire families, namely boas and pythons, but I never figured out if they were fertile or not.
Its actually really interesting that phylogenetic classification has the most complex definition, and yet has the greatest Explanatory power. I find people are often biased towards simple answers, like : "if i cant understand it, it doesnt make sense". Life and biology is so much more complicated than the average person understands. I just wish that people would learn this and think : "hmm what do *I* not understand and then decide is too complicated to be true" instead of immediately forgetting that in most all respects *everyone* is the 'average' person, not giving enough credit to the complexity of a particular topic.
I love how this can also be applied to languages. No one can define what a language is; where one starts, where another ends, what is the same language, what are different ones, and so on. There are some Arabic varieties so different from one another that they might be considered different languages, whereas some Norwegian and Swedish varieties can perfectly understand each other despite being considered different languages. I love these parallels between linguistics and biology.
This subjectivity is true of a lot of "science".
For example, the IAU redefined "planet" to exclude Pluto specifically because they didn't like the idea of having 15 planets, which the objective definition would have included.
They felt it is easier to market science (for money) if there is a short list of planets.
So they added a very subjective additional definition, to make the list shorter.
We'd actually have 50-100 planets that way, which would be fine, but why exclude satellites in hydrostatic equilibrium? The real reason is that, astronomically, the dwarfs are a relevant orbital category of their own. You literally can't have a stable orbital configuration where there are objects in-between gravitationally dominant and dominated. It's one or the other - two distinct populations. There still exists the term "planemo" (planetary mass object), which is the geophysical planet concept, including rogue planets, planets, dwarf planets, and satellites in hydrostatic equilibrium. It's not defined by the IAU, and it's usually used for rogue planets, but it is a thing. If you actually knew the subject, you'd know that calls to reclassify Pluto as a planet are almost always subjective and emotional, and would result in a less rigorous system.
Not quite. They redefined planet because there wasn't a working definition of what a planet was.
And as more Kuiper belt objects were discovered that were similar in size to Pluto, the number of planets was going to jump waaaaay more than 5.
@@iluvtacos1231 Wrong.
They ESTABLISHED a working definition, because there was not one.
And that definition was reasonable:
"A body that orbits the sun (star), and is large enough to reach hydrostatic equilibrium."
But then some of the more unscientific, bureaucratic members objected that this would include about 15 planets. And their explicit argument against this was that 15 is too confusing for the broader public.
So they added the unscientific, purely subjective "cleared their neighborhood", which is so vague that it applies as well to the Earth as to Pluto, but of course Earth is still included, while Pluto is not.
@@alexandruianu8432 The reason to exclude satellites is that they don't orbit the sun. Obviously, orbiting the sun (the star in question) is THE criterion. Anything else is a moon of whatever it's orbiting. Or even a planet of that body, but not a stellar planet.
@@KAZVorpal
Right...which is what I said, they made one.
My guy. It doesn't apply to Pluto, or any of the Kuiper Belt objects.
If it did, it would still be a planet. That's why it's a dwarf planet.
You seem intent on reading nefarious intentions into something where it doesn't seem they exist.
1:20 this is now a grammar question. To clarify the a thing will no happen is future tense that it could not happen is not the same thing at all, it is subjunctive. You can’t science until you language. So, it is possible that those tigers are brought together and presuming they are of the appropriate genders they would produce off-spring.
apparently christmas starts next week
I love the constant hagfish reference. Which recently has made me wonder... If mammals evolved before reptiles, why do we only think of reptiles when discussing the Mesozoic era? We know crocodilians ruled the Triassic, and Dinosaurs the Jurassic and Cretaceous. What mammals existed in the mesozoic?
Clintus confusiensis
He who attempts to quantumize the species continuum.
Funny enough at my work which does environmental analysis had sent me an email recently about the difference between a genus and a species in regards to mold identification, even though that is not my department, this was uploaded at a relevant time.
Tell them it is similar to bacteria.
We are the Knights of Neesh !!!
Very mind opening Clint, great quality as always!
According to the ecological species concept, a weta is a mouse, a penguin is a seal, and hyenas are arguably the direct descendants of T. rex.
I do agree with most things said and I really enjoyed the video. Nonetheless, I would like to argue that the problem presented is rather a philosophical one, a metaphysical one to be more precise: What kind of classification is ‘species’
See, he could and maybe should ask the question if 'species' is a natural kind, or is it rather an artificial kind (i.e. human kind). Meaning, does the term relate to something which is indifferent to the human understanding and definition of this classification? In other words, is 'species' something that does exist independently of humans who utilize the term for modelling, ordering and classifying other kinds to understand something about those other kinds? It is apparent and he does a great job in illustrating how the term ‘species’ does not seem to fit these criteria of something being a natural kind. Whereas it appears that the term could still claim a special position, since it is a way of classifying and understanding other kinds which seem to be rightfully called natural kinds (like organisms).
A good example for a true natural kind would be something like hydrogen, it is defined by its atomical properties and composition, and humans have just discovered those but haven’t invented them. Humans may be responsible for naming it ‘hydrogen’ but the atom doesn’t care about that name, that does not change anything about its properties and composition. Therefore, we might introduce the concept of a classification being a model of a natural kind, which is not to say that there are no arbitrary elements derived from the human intellect in such models of something like hydrogen (like that name). Nonetheless, we have well founded reason that there is something in our model of hydrogen which does express and relate to something indifferent and independent of our understanding and classification of it (atomical properties and composition in this case).
Regarding the term ‘species’, the various models Clint presents are widely different in its metaphysical functions. For instance, take the ecological model, that one isn’t even concerned with the question of what a species is, it isn’t proposing a model of species, it is rather presenting a model for understanding species in its ecological context. In a model for something the classification does not need to be concerned about expressing something real in the sense of meaning and relating to something that does exist outside of a particular way of seeing and understanding something. A »model for« something is therefore oriented towards a particular external purpose and will employ artificial kinds in order of doing so. The definition the ecological model proposes is therefore merely a classification that claims to be a fruitful concept to work with in the realms of ecology, but metaphysically speaking that classification is just a tool invented by humans, not much different to something like a hammer or telescope.
The phylogenetic modeling on the other hand might just be best described as a model of natural kinds (genes) but is itself an application within a model for understanding something which does not mean anything beyond and does not exist outside of a particular human way of seeing and understanding. In our case, this particular human model for understanding something, is employing the concept of a ‘species’ to be a fruitful tool to understand something like organisms, evolution or alike (assumedly other natural kinds again).
Anyhow, I believe none of the presented models are seriously claiming to have a metaphysical concept which could be described as a model of species in the sense of it being a natural kind. Therefore, I might like to argue that those concepts are misrepresented whenever they appear to be able of answering the question of “what is a species”, in the sense of ‘species’ being a natural kind. Those concepts do not aim to answer that question, but they do utilize hypothetical answers to that question in order to understand something else.
(Even though it’s probably true, that most people who are working with those concepts are not aware of all of this)
What is a species but a miserable pile of genes
Earned the 👍
Oh man - I have never heard of the other 3 ways of defining a species, and I was a biology major!
The phylogenetic approach is somewhat appealing because I learned relatively recently that homo sapiens were able to reproduce with and produce viable, fertile offspring with not only Neanderthals but also with Denisovans. Does that mean we are all the same species? According to the traditional definition, yes! According to the phylogenetic definition, I’m guessing the answer is no because the exchange of genetic material would be difficult to categorize as “recent.” To think that we are the same species as Neanderthals and Denisovans seems wrong and I’m hoping it’s not because of a subconscious species supremacy but more because they seem so different from us. Then again, we look a lot more like Neanderthals and Denisovans than a chihuahua looks like a Great Dane but they are the same species.
But if we use the phylogenetic approach, we have the problem of a subspecies that is separated geographically from other members of the group being called a separate species under the phylogenetic definition of the term “species,” because there is no current or recent gene flow, and that seems wrong to me. The Florida panther would be considered a different species from a mountain lion living in California.
And the phylogenetic definition still makes it difficult to define a species if an organism reproduces only asexually.
I agree that the morphological and ecological approaches to define a species are too problematic.
I kinda think of speciation as like animation cells; they may look minimally different with one cell next to another, but when you run them in sequence, you can see the transition.
At 7:52, this is an exhibit at the Paige Museum at LaBrea Tar Pits. I visited just yesterday as a geology student and learned a lot!
Here I had the moderately informed answer, and just made up my own answer for why there isn't a clear division. Evolution is a slow progress, not instant overnight. So "grey" species like the salamanders mentioned are interesting because it's evolution in progress that we can observe. Even in phylogenetics, you still have to decide where to draw the line of when something becomes a new species and that's the hardest part.
Also the evolution of information is neat because how much we build off of prior knowledge. Some animals may be different species now because mankind didn't have genetic testing when they gave them a name, like the anacondas. Even if some scientist made mistakes, they still helped pave the way for new ideas.
These are among my favorite type of videos you do