Racism is due to speciation tendencies in humans

What causes "speciation" is more a behavioral issue than a genetic one: we see behavior where different varieties of asian green warblers, for instance, do not see each other as potential mates.We also see many instances where groups of animals we consider different species, camels and llamas, for instance, can be interbred by in-vitro fertilization.Racism, and other xenophobic, is behavior that reduces breeding between varieties of humans.Conclusion: this is how speciation would occur in humans.Enjoy.Note this is in free-for-all so let your reactions roll.

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Hi RAZD, Now that's interesting. I'm a bit of a birder myself. Any chance you could expand upon that or provide a link?Overall, I think your idea is a good one, if a little hard to provide evidence for. There are plenty of species that could interbreed if they wanted to; to just don't. Fortunately, humans are the one species around with the wherewithal to rise above such behaviour. All together now, "What we need is a great big melting pot..."

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Asian Greenish Warblers:

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Greenish warblers (Phylloscopus trochiloides) inhabit forests across much of northern and central Asia. In central Siberia, two distinct forms of greenish warbler coexist without interbreeding, and therefore these forms can be considered distinct species. The two forms are connected by a long chain of populations encircling the Tibetan Plateau to the south, and traits change gradually through this ring of populations. There is no place where there is an obvious species boundary along the southern side of the ring. Hence the two distinct 'species' in Siberia are apparently connected by gene flow. By studying geographic variation in the ring of populations, we can study how speciation has occurred. This unusual situation has been termed a 'circular overlap' or 'ring species'. There are very few known examples of ring species.

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Which is why it is a behavioral issue, rather than physical. The "cama" is a rather remarkable example of this, where the two species have been segregated for millions of years and are so different in size that it makes breeding difficult. You commie liberal - next you'll be saying that chimpanzees deserve human rights and we need to allow human-chimp marriages!Enjoy.

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Thanks for that, it's fascinating stuff. Typical bloody warblers, that they should differ in appearance by such tiny degrees, yet have such markedly different songs. They're the ultimate in little brown jobs. I was particularly interested in this;

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Surprisingly, the two northern forms of greenish warbler differ little in habitat preference and body shape and size. However, viridanus and plumbeitarsus do differ from southern forms in these traits.

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A lovely example of convergent evolution. The camas sound somewhat less lovely.

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The cama apparently inherited the poor temperament of both parents

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Ouch! Oh, and I'm a commie liberal? You're the one who's accusing the little birdies of racism!

I donno about this RAZD. If history is any guide then geography was the initial cause of human variety and where ever such populations came together there were “hybrids,” if you will excuse the use of that term.These days with geographic barriers falling by the wayside the “age of the great human copulation” is in full swing regardless of racial character.I will grant that there will always be xenophobes in populations but I can also see those barriers breaking down.Seems that in humans the sheer fun of the sex act overwhelms xenophobia to a great degree.The populations of H. sapiens were not isolated long enough to develop a Mayr type speciation event and with that isolation gone I do not see such an event as being likely in the next few thousand generations.Now, once we get a human population permanently into space? ... well, we’ll see.My opinion, given openly, free of charge and worth every cent, is that isolation, not xenophobia, is the only vector toward a daughter species from humans. We just like to screw around too much.

Similar to "hybrid zones" for the Greenish Warbler. But is there really that much mixing going on? How many cross-cultural marriages do you know? If this were really people freely interacting with people there would be no issue of race and it would be like differences between blonds and brunettes, blue and brown eyes. There you go being a liberal commie sympathizer, forcing your hippy atheistic homophylic free-love agenda on everyone else. () Next you'll be advocating free-love with chimpanzees, eh? Marriage with monkeys? Where does this moral slippery slope end? All kidding aside, perhaps Mayr was wrong, and that what marks speciation is behavior. Certainly when you go back and read the rampant racism of the Victorian era (and earlier), you can see possibilities of behavioral isolation, and even today you see this in cities around the world. We can call it cultural self segregation, or self isolation within populations. The population people breed in may not be the same as the population people live in.You can also see the attitudes of "they are different" or "they are not like us" or "they are less 'human' than us" in racist thinking. You also see this in how "half-breeds" are treated. I think there is still a lot of this going on around the world (read any articles on genocide lately?).I'm not saying speciation has happened, but that this would be the mechanism. Well, that's another way to achieve "vertical isolation" within horizontal populations ...What is interesting to me, is that once you consider behavior as an isolation mechanisms, as a cause for speciation (see Greenish Warblers), and then look at what behavior in humans would cause such isolation between otherwise similar populations, racism and xenophobia just jump out at you: "they" are not "us" anymore.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : clarity

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Lots. And then lots more. There are a whole slew of Hispanic/You-Name-It couplings going on down here. Interestingly, there is a large community of Hispanic/Oriental in this area.If you were ever in the military then you already know the German, French, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese and most recently Saudi and Iraqi pairings that exist by the boatload. If I recall correctly one of the Soviets’ major concerns was the number of Afghani wives their soldiers were bringing home at the time.When I went to school in Missouri a hundred years ago (and I am seeing the same up the street here at ASU today) you can’t walk 20 feet around campus without running into a mixed-ethnic couple holding hands and making goo-goo faces at each other. It’s sickening. They still have it, I’ve lost it, and it makes me sick. Except this has only been going on since WWII and only in earnest since the 80’s.

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Since 1960 the number of interracial couples in the United States has increased more than tenfold, to 1.6 million, including marriages involving Hispanics. Such unions now account for about 4 percent of U.S. marriages, a share that is expected to mushroom in coming years and that is already offering powerful evidence that many Americans are jettisoning old prejudices as never before.

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Washington Post 1998Only a single short decade ago.And now more recently.

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By comparison about one of 50 of U.S. married couples were interracial in 1970. And a Stanford University sociologist estimates that by 2005 more than 7 percent of America’s 59 million married couples were interracial.

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Mixed Marriage SiteGive it a few dozen generations. You Americans are sooo impatient. Hey, Bub, that’s conservative commie sympathizer to you! Damn straight!Now get in line and keep that monkey quiet.PS RAZD: Hope you’re still doing OK.

It won't be free-love for very long. Pimp-chimps will be hanging around the monkeybars before you know it.

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Technically, there aren't different extant "varieties" (subspecies) of humans, are there? People of different races are all still the same subspecies, homo sapiens sapiens. (correct me if I'm wrong!)I guess the idea is that reproductive isolation could get it to that point, and then the process could continue until speciation occurred. Assuming speciation could occur in humans the way you have described, how long do you think it would take to happen? Would any humans still be alive at that point in the future?
Also, considering selective pressure for humans is fairly low in most of the world humans live in, wouldn't the mutations that would lead to speciation rarely be selected for? Low selection pressure equates to few evolutionary adaptations, few evolutionary adaptations means that it could practically take forever for speciation to occur.That's just my take on it. =) Your idea is interesting to consider.

Wikipedia: race (classification of human beings)

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Race as subspecies

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With the advent of the modern synthesis in the early 20th century, many biologists sought to use evolutionary models and populations genetics in an attempt to formalise taxonomy below the species level. The term subspecies is used by biologists when a group of organisms are classified in such a way. In biology the term "race" is very rarely used because it is ambiguous, "'Race' is not being defined or used consistently; its referents are varied and shift depending on context.

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Some species of organisms do not appear to fragment into subgroups, while others do seem to form such subspecific groups. A monotypic species comprises a single group or rather a single subspecies. Monotypic species can occur in several ways ...

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A polytypic species has two or more subspecies. These are separate populations that are more genetically different from one another and that are more reproductively isolated, gene flow between these populations is much reduced leading to genetic differentiation.

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According to Sewall Wright, who was born in 1889, there is no question that human populations that have long inhabited separated parts of the world should, in general, be considered to be of different subspecies by the usual criterion that most individuals of such populations can be allocated correctly by inspection.

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Once you have reproductive isolation you have speciation. Low selection pressure would mean that lots of variation would be allowed by external pressures, I would think this leaves more emphasis on behavioral pressures of mate selection.I would also think that wars and famines and changing weather patterns would apply significant selection pressure. We already have enough differences to affect behavior. I think behavior is the key, and as AZPaul3 points out there has been a significant change in behavior since the 60's - traditionally humans have been rather xenophobic.Certainly the genocidal conflicts we see would also compare to behavior in species where speciation was imminent and there was competition between subpopulations.Enjoy.

In regards to race as subspecies:

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Today, all humans are classified as belonging to the species Homo sapiens and sub-species Homo sapiens sapiens.

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wikipedia linkand a part that may be of particular importance:

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It is also compatible with our finding that, even when the most distinct populations are considered and hundreds of loci are used, individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own population.

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Stated by D.J. Witherspoon, Department of Human Genetics, University of Utah Health Sciences Center et al. in 2007 (wikipedia link)So it seems that so far racism and xenophobia have done little to create genetic differentiation between populations. I'd say it's more of a step towards speciation, rather than representing speciation in and of itself.

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The separation of the gene pools of populations, under some conditions, can lead to the genesis of distinct species.

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wikipedia link Low selection pressure will indeed allow for genetic diversity, however, it will not consistently cause it to be selected for unless it confers some survival advantage. If the selection pressure is low then most individuals have the necessary access to resources and opportunities to reproduce, so those with the potential advantages don't get to pass on their genes more than any other individuals.

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Selection occurs only when the individuals of a population are diverse in their characteristics--or more specifically when the traits of individuals differ with respect to how well they equip them to survive or exploit a particular pressure. In the absence of individual variation, or when variations are selectively neutral, selection does not occur.

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wikipedia link From what I've seen, it appears those factors haven't done so thus far. Perhaps that could change in the future. I'd imagine there's a lot more selection pressure in third world countries than there is where I live in the United States. I'm glad to see that they are less so now. Let's hope that trend continues. I'm not sure I agree with you here. AFAIK speciation could only potentially be imminent when subpopulations are isolated from each other, and thus not able to compete with each other.

Or this is just more of the same specio-centric egotism that keeps us from including chimpanzees in Homo. I have to agree with Sewall Wright, that in any other species that we would see varieties classified. Geneticists and taxonomists can argue both sides, and it depends more on whether you are a lumper or a splitter. That individuals can, and do, differ from the local population does not mean that there aren't differences between local populations - it just means that there is still gene flow between the populations affecting some, but not all, members. The article also says:

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Recently, Lynn Jorde and Steven Wooding argued that "Analysis of many loci now yields reasonably accurate estimates of genetic similarity among individuals, rather than populations. Clustering of individuals is correlated with geographic origin or ancestry."[57]

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Edwards concludes that "It is not true that 'racial classification is ... of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance' or that 'you can't predict someone’s race by their genes'."[58]

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When you couple this with the above quote what you can see (interpret) is mixing of populations, but sorting by ancestry - people moving to new locations but mating with other people from their geographic origin or ancestry. To be blunt whites living with whites and blacks living with blacks, even though both whites and blacks live in all cities. We can call it preserving cultural and ethnic heritage. Sure there are hybrid zones, but there are also subpopulations that do remain isolated from direct mixing, slowing down gene flow by several generations. We can quibble over the difference between "isolation" and "separation" - I currently live separate from my wife but we are not reproductively isolated (she takes care of her mother, we get together on weekends).For me, the term "isolation" biologically speaking means that there is virtually no gene flow. Take the Asian Greenish Warblers (Message 3), where you have gene flow between adjacent varieties except in the final overlap. For me P. t. viridanus and P. t. plumbeitarsus are effectively reproductively isolated due to the numbers of generations that would be required to breed around the ring to get from one to the other with a new trait, with the accumulated effect of selection ongoing in the process.However each is separated from other populations geographically except in hybrid zones with their immediate neighbors: we don't know whether other populations would breed together or not. We don't know it either P. t. viridanus or P. t. plumbeitarsus would breed with P. t. trochiloides, or if any of the ring varieties would breed with P. t. nitidus, because all we know is that they are separated.It may be splitting hairs, or it may be circular definition - reproductive isolation results in species because species are reproductively isolated. We also have the issue of separation and potential breeding, as demonstrated by the cama (also Message 3), where a camel and a llama were bred even after millions of years of rather extreme geographical separation and lack of gene flow. There is little question, however, that they would not choose to breed, due to morphological and temperamental factors, and that they are different species, is there?We have many instances of behavior restricting breeding more than genes - all the cross-breeds that creationists love, from ligers to wholpins, to camas. It seems to me that mate recognition behavior is much more crucial to speciation than genetics ... in all species where there is sexual selection of mates.This includes humans. It is possible to divide up into racial/ethnic/cultural enclaves based on behavior without any need for any further genetic changes, and this is the point of this thread. IMH(ysa)O, sexual selection has made us what we are (see Sexual Selection, Stasis, Runaway Selection, Dimorphism, & Human Evolution), and it is equally capable of causing speciation by isolationist behavior. Meaning that variation will not be selected against either. What you have is genetic drift and the build up of diversity within a species. But they can be isolated without being separated if the reproductive isolation is based on behavior (mating in the morning, versus the evening, caused speciation in a species of mosquitoes living in the same geographic area ^{1}). They just need to be behaviorally isolated.Enjoy.^{1}- see Marston Bates, "The Forest and the Sea"Edited by RAZD, : added to quote

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In the Evolution is antithetical to racism it was argued that racism was not due to evolution, but to other causes in human culture.One could argue that that thread was based on microevolution - variation and selection - and not on macroevolution - speciation and division.One could ask: is racist behavior a mechanism that can cause speciation ... would speciation occur if it continued?... or one could ask: if emergent speciation behavior were occurring, what would it look like? Would it not look like any behavior that results in reproductive isolation of subpopulations?Would racist behavior qualify? I think so.Would ethnic genocide qualify? I think so.Would self-segregation into ethnic\cultural neighborhoods qualify? I think so.Is racism necessarily a result of speciation behavior?Enjoy.

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One could also argue that the cultural cause for racism could be a direct result of evolution. It goes back to the survival of the tribe and "us versus them" sort of thing.

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I'm trying to see things your way, but I can't put my head that far up my ass.

The behaviour is genetic, RAZD, not cultural. So, "behaviour restricting breeding more than genes" doesn't make sense. In your Asian warblers, the two point species may have been isolated for thousands of generations as they moved north on different sides of the desert, and the mating calls had drifted apart (probably genetic drift).Compare this to humans, and it would be something like our ancestors meeting up with Neanderthals in Europe after thousands of generations of separate lineage from a common ancestor group. No mating calls involved, but if you or I were asked to rate a Neanderthal girl (a beauty to the Neanderthal male) on a scale of 1 to 10, we would probably come out with a decimal fraction like 0.15, and have little or no desire to mate with her at all (judging from the speculative reconstructions of their faces).The comparison with the tendency of our species to separate into different cultures is a mistake. The cultures of separation never last long enough to cause the populations to become significantly different genetically. The differences in racial appearance that we see were achieved by chance geographical isolation, not by conscious cultural separation, and for real speciation to take place, a group of us would have to be completely isolated geographically for a very long time.The point I'm making is that Warblers do not start down the road to speciation by inventing different cultures that refuse to breed with the neighbouring "savages/infidels/heretics" etc. If they don't breed with a neighbouring group, it's in their genes not to do so. And human cultural separation in the same geographic area is only temporary, so cannot cause reproductive isolation, especially as there's always genetic exchange anyway.The European Jews managed to keep a separate cultural identity in Europe for two thousand years by religious separation, but if you look at them, they certainly failed to maintain the racial purity of the chosen tribe of God. Now, with the declining importance of religion, they are mixing in rapidly with other groups in Europe and the U.S. (a 50% out marriage rate).I don't think you can get sympatric speciation due to non-genetic (cultural) behaviour in our species or any other.It may be that looking at black and white America has distorted your view. Your intermarriage rate is low because of the cultural legacy of separatism. In London, where the modern black population started arriving in living memory (1948) the mixing rate is much higher, and the U.S. is certainly heading the same way slowly, in its usual conservative fashion.