Yes, they identified different evolutionary lineages, but do they actually know that this new species of turtle does not and perhaps cannot breed with the old?
The paper gives a discussion of the reasons for the classification by DNA of the turtles as different species. The rationale does not include
any consideration of interbreeding. The idea expressed in the article is that the different species have had little to no gene flow between them, and the time of divergence is expressed in millions of years in the past as opposed to being of recent vintage.
quote:
Each of the two taxa have numerous private alleles, implying very little recent gene flow, and they are as genetically divergent from each other as the other named species are from one another [11, 13, 20]. Previous studies have also revealed the existence of a limited amount of introgression between the two taxa [11, 13, 20], which is not unexpected given their geographical proximity.
I take this sentence to mean that the two taxa can interbreed, but that they have genetic divergence on the order/magnitude that we find between species under the current classification system.
Or are they perhaps using some DNA bookkeeping criteria for determining species that ignores interfertility of populations?
Yeah, that seems to be what is going on. I would add though that the kind of genetic separation involved probably would not exist if there were unrestricted interbreeding.
Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.
Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.
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