Re: ROBUST TIGERS etc

["David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

Why not putting this on the PhyloCode mailing list?
listserv@ohiou.edu (I think)
PhyloCode@ouvaxa.cats.ohiou.edu

> On Thu, 28 Sep 2000 darren.naish@port.ac.uk wrote:
> 
> > On tigers and lions and defining species etc.
> > 
> > First of all, George's comment about hybridism between lions and 
> > tigers does not count for much. Apparently disparate genera within 
> > clades can sometimes hybridise. This depends on which group of 
> > animals you are looking at: some seem to be particular good at it. 
> > Example: _Tursiops_ (bottlenosed dolphin) has hybridised with 
> > _Pseudorca_, _Lagenorhynchus_ and _Grampus_. _Pseudorca_ and 
> > _Grampus_ are often put in a different 'subfamily' (the 
> > Globicephalinae or one of its many synonyms) from _Tursiops_.
> > 
> 
> Amongst Australian lizardz there is evidence for lineages that have been
> distinct since the Oligocene still being able to hybridise. Cunningham's
> skink
> (Egernia cunninghami) can hybridise with the common bluetongue (Tiliqua
> scincoides). Tiliqua is a robust clade with fossils members in the
> Oligo-Miocene limestones of Riversleigh. Therefore the two lineages must
> be at least as old as these fossils.
> As someone (Can't remember who) once said to me, during my undergraduate
> years, "The ability to interbreed is a plesiomorphic character,
> therefore species by definition aren't clades".
> 
> cheers
> 
> Adam Yates