this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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Science Memes

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Cannabis (mander.xyz)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

MFW someone pretends there is a universally accepted definition of "species."

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Obviously life will refuse to be neatly classified, but that doesn't mean people smarter than us won't still try to do it in order to better understand the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

... yes? Did you not read your own link? There are several definitions of "species" offered. Go have a look at how this applies to Cannabis and perhaps you will get my point.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What's wrong with the definition about being able to make fertile offspring?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

Life is much more complicated than the middle school definition. Some of the more interesting species are "sterile" crosses that have overcome the sterility. For example the ancestry of wheat.

Wheat is mostly a hexaploid aka 6 copies of each chromosome. It arose from a triploid interspecific cross (triploids are always sterile) that spontaneously doubled (hexaploids are fertile).

As a hexaploid it can be crossed to diploid rye to produce fertile offspring called triticale (tetraploid). Crossing triticale to either wheat or rye creates sterile offspring (pentaploid & triploid)

So are they all one species because they can sometimes produce fertile offspring?