Comment on Polar bears
xwolpertinger@lemmy.world 6 days agoFun fact: Grizzlies and Polar Bears are the same species according to the Biological Species Concept.
Calling it that gives it too much credit, it is something thought up in the 17th/18th century without any concept of genetics and evolution.
Which might explain why it breaks down almost instantly under any amount of scrutiny.
barsoap@lemm.ee 5 days ago
It’s a category. All lines are arbitrary to a degree and “interbreeds and produces viable offspring” is not terribly arbitrary. You can have arguments around populations which could and would interbreed if they weren’t geographically distinct, you can argue about whether offspring needs to be viable no matter which way around the sexes of the parents are, or how large the percentage of viable offspring needs to be, but in the end, yep it makes sense to have a distinction somewhere around that bunch of criteria.
House cats and European wild cats are considered distinct species not because they’re genetically incompatible, but because they don’t interbreed – too many behavioural differences, and we’re not speaking about culture, here. So even if they could intermingle in theory in practice they don’t, so they stay separate, so they’re different species.
It’s kind of… a behavioural view on the genome? If you have a better idea, field it.