13 ms·
>So, they are arguably the same species, though arguably not. Nature has no respect for our discrete classifications.
by Crito 9y ago
>So, they are arguably the same species, though arguably not.
Nature has no respect for our discrete classifications.
- MR4D 9y agoYour statement nailed it. I think that 100 years from now we won't be teaching biology and it's existing classification system of Kingdom/Phylum/Class, but something much more accurate based on genetics (i.e. DNA). It might still fit the hierarchy, but the delineation will be much better aligned with nature.
- olavk 9y agoI think classifications are necessary even though nature is fuzzy and gradual.
- marcosdumay 9y agoWe are already reviewing species, gender, family and sometimes even class classification based on DNA. It didn't change things that much.
- GlennS 9y agoThis has already happened, and is called cladistics. So, pretty good prediction.
- sedachv 9y agoThat is already how biology is being taught: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m4Gvu90Ydw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m4Gvu90Ydw [Lec 1 | MIT 7.012 Introduction to Biology, Fall 2004]
- averagewall 9y agoHumans need classifications to easily understand and describe complex things. If you defined species in a continuous way, we'd have a hard time getting our heads around how similar these prehistoric "animals" were to ourselves. We'd have to describe their differences which would be quite complicated. Instead, we can coarsely group them into species as a quick mental shortcut for high level understanding.
- placeybordeaux 9y agoBut humans obviously do.
- wyager 9y agoOur discrete classifications actually match DNA-based clustering results pretty accurately. If you do multi-dimensional clustering on allele frequency at multiple loci, the clusters pretty much exactly match the species/subspecies classifications that humans use intuitively. Our discrete classifications don't cover all cases, but they're surprisingly good in the vast majority of cases.