>>13584412When I was in undergrad in Bio, they jumped around defining species and this idea fucked with my head so hard and it eventually lead me to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_concepthttps://academic.oup.com/sysbio/article/56/6/879/1653163And I am no expert either, but what my undergrad textbook and google research lead me to conclude this;
The general rule for everyone is that if you can breed together you are counted as one species, so generally we consider humans 1 species with no sub-species since all humans pretty much free to breed with one another. This definition breaks down when looking at specific cases like asexual organisms and dog sub-species/breeds. So they tried making new ones to decisively decide what a species is:
If you're a species realist: The human race is probably multiple sub-species since there are unique traits like anatomy and physiology that make groups of humans distinct from each other. It doesn't matter if they can breed together, all that matters is that are they phenotypically similar (race realism origin)
If you're a species nominalist: Species don't exist at all. The separation of organisms doesn't really exist, the human race is just a mish-mash pool of genes and there is no distinction between organism, phenotypes be damned. Species doesn't exist at all, not in reality, and our idea of compartmentalizing groups of organisms is false.
If you're a species pragmatist: Species doesn't exist as a natural quality, but it does exist as a concept. So all humans could be 1,2,3 or how ever many difference sub-species that you want but in reality species isn't a real thing that is quality of organisms. Humans are just one dynamic group and we can put boxes around clusters wherever we want and call those group a species. No one personal definition of species is more right here, just moving around perspectives.
Then there are like 20 others ways to define species, but these are the historical (now debunked ones).
