>>13642015This is an ontological issue, in reality it doesn't matter how we describe species at the boundaries
It's a fuzzy category, like almost all our other words
All that matters is that I can say "that's a tiger" and you know broadly what I mean
There's no way to give a rigorous definition that doesn't have weird boundary cases, and most taxonomists know this
If you think species exist and can be specified then please answer:
>When do two seperated populations become distinct species>Can you pinpoint the single individual that became the first member of the new species>If two populations can mostly not interbreed, but a few individuals of each can still interbreed and produce offspring that can interbreed with both populations, are the populations different species? >What if we have that case but those members that can still interbreed dont end up doing so, when did the species seperate? When they stopped interbreeding or when the ones that still could died out?>If you can pinpoint the first individual of a new species, say because of a certain mutation, what happens if he dies without reproducing, was there a new species of one individual that became extinct?The tree of life is one made up of individual organisms. Species are just a circle we draw around current branches of that tree. They are ultimately a little arbitrary, the labels serve to communicate information that isn't perfect