BIOL 1001 Study Guide - Final Guide: Species Complex, Phylogenetic Tree
Document Summary
Individuals are members of the same species if they interbreed in nature to produce viable and ferile ofspring. This is a useless deiniion for asexually reproducing species and for fossils. A further limitaion is that in a geographically widespread species, the deiniion isn"t ever tested for individuals living thousands of kilometers apart. Such distant populaions may difer somewhat, but they may be the same species in that they are reproducively compaible, but they never are near enough to test" the deiniion. Individuals are members of the same species if they. More paricularly, if they are the same colour, same size and shape, have the same number of legs, etc. , then they are the same species. This deiniion is not limited to sexual species. We looked at a slide with images of primates, of beetles, and of shorebirds where there were numerous phenotypes in each, but they demonstrate that diferences can be subtle and challenging.
