Reddit reviews Speciation

The question, and the issue of defining a "species," reminds me of what Richard Dawkins points out about common descent. If you lined up in a line by order of descent with ALL of your ancestors, including the ancestors no longer living, as you looked at each individual in the line you could say "He is the son of the father standing next to him," going back as far as you want, even hundreds of millions of years, and yet at some point in the deep past the ancestors would not look anything at all like "humans," or indeed even like mammals or like tetrapods. At the individual level, OF COURSE you are part of the same species as your parents (by definition of "species"). Life on Earth today has a common ancestor, or at the very least a common set of one-celled ancestors, by general agreement of biologists, so all the species that have differentiated from one another over time can be traced to common ancestors of multiple species. You are undoubtedly related to your parents, who belong to the same species you do, but you have remote ancestors whom no one would call individuals of the species Homo sapiens. There simply isn't any definite line to draw between one species and the next, historically, and that was what was shocking about Darwin's idea of branching speciation from common ancestors, the only idea he presented visually in his book The Origin of Species.


For a book-length treatment of speciation as a scientific issue for the thoroughly curious, see Speciation by Jerry A. Coyne and H. Allen Orr,
http://www.amazon.com/Speciation-Jerry-A-Coyne/dp/0878930892
which discusses mechanisms of speciation and how theories about those mechanisms are tested by biologists.

>>Nobody is presenting an "oppositional theory",

>That is precisely what happened, did you read Dunsworth's post?

I did. Her argument was against an approach to evo psych, not an attempt to come up with a rigorous alternative theory to that specific claim.

>>This is what I hate about laymen

>Coyne? Who literally wrote the book on speciation?. Versus Jesse Singal? Who (after a quick google) appears to be no more than an egotist with a twitter account.

I was more talking about people on reddit and elsewhere that talk about the problems with "blank slatists" but yes, Coyne is obviously a layman when it comes to evo psych - he's no more qualified than Singal.

>It could not be addressed more directly. He explicitly dissects Dunsworth's alternative idea (concocted to challenge the theory that sexual selection can in anyway explain the sexual dimorphism of human beings) based on no more than observable and well documented evidence alone.

The criticism isn't that his argument about sexual dimorphism is wrong.

>People who reject/ignore evidence are usually the ones guilty of injecting the politics (cf climate change).

Indeed and that's what Coyne is obviously doing.

>That some human behaviours can be explained as a result of evolution terrifies some people (because then where does individual responsibility go?) as evident from reading the comment section of the original PZ piece.

But again, nobody is disagreeing that evolution is true or that it affects things like our psychology.

You're doing exactly what the criticism of Coyne argues that people do. Instead of addressing the criticism they fall back on some imagined enemy that supposedly denies evolution.

I don't see what value or use there is in making things up like that.

https://www.amazon.com/Speciation-Jerry-Coyne/dp/0878930892/ref=sr_1_1?s=books

If you're going to hand these books over to others, you might want to go with something a little less technical as a first introduction. I highly recommend these books:

By Neil Shubin: Neil is a paleo-ichthyologist (he studies ancient fish) who discovered Tiktaalik. The link between modern humans and ancient fish are very well-known.

Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body


And for the link between organic and inorganic materials:

The Universe Within: The Deep History of the Human Body: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets and People

And by Jerry Coyne

Why Evolution is True

And for a more detailed technical book, on a level for graduate school, this one by Jerry Coyne and H. Allen Orr:

Speciation

I hope these serve you well.

If you get really interested in the topic, there's an excellent book by Coyne and Orr

Since you're writing a lecture, you should be aware that some people (particularly Jerry Coyne who, along with Orr, wrote 'the book' on Speciation has doubted the existence of any good examples of ring species.

More broadly, the criterion of interfertility is rarely applied in a strict sense in modern taxonomy. The fact that Neanderthals and other humans interbred doesn't settle the issue. Lots of good species occasionally interbreed with other species.