Talk:Ring species

This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

Evolutionary biology High‑importance

	Evolutionary biology portal This article is part of WikiProject Evolutionary biology, an attempt at building a useful set of articles on evolutionary biology and its associated subfields such as population genetics, quantitative genetics, molecular evolution, phylogenetics, and evolutionary developmental biology. It is distinct from the WikiProject Tree of Life in that it attempts to cover patterns, process and theory rather than systematics and taxonomy. If you would like to participate, there are some suggestions on this page (see also Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ for more information) or visit WikiProject Evolutionary biologyEvolutionary biologyWikipedia:WikiProject Evolutionary biologyTemplate:WikiProject Evolutionary biologyEvolutionary biology articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

"The herring gull complex is not a ring species" ?[edit]

Can someone comment on the following: The herring gull complex is not a ring species We may have to change our example. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gareth Owen (talk • contribs) 15:22, 19 May 2006

From the abstract, it looks like the paper is just saying that the ring isn't closed:

... Contrary to the ring-species model, we find no genetic evidence for a closure of the circumpolar ring through colonization of Europe by North American herring gulls. However, closure of the ring in the opposite direction may be imminent, with lesser black-backed gulls about to colonize North America.

My ill-informed guess is that the phrase 'ring species' is used loosely by some and strictly by others. The title of the paper is amusingly ironic in the context of the wiki article, though. Kaleja 06:34, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Ring species" is a term used mostly in zoological circles, but there are apparently no examples of "ring species" in the strict sense in studied vertebrates. Ensatina & Phylloscopus are almost certainly not ring species. In Ensatina, the "ring" formed by the Sierra Nevada, Coast Ranges, and Transverse Ranges in California apparently has a permeable center, with salamanders able to cross the Central Valley (at least historically). In Phylloscopus, the data suggest an eastern and western clade that have both relatively recently colonized both the supposed ancestral area and the supposed re-contact zone. The term persists in zoological literature because the concept is "sexy" rather than because it has empirical applicability or relevance. There may be plant examples, but if so they are rare. --Patrick Alexander (too lazy to login) — Preceding undated comment added 03:01, 3 December 2006

Diagram[edit]

The diagram's explanation is unclear. For instance, it says:

Interbreeding between two populations is shown by a grey zone.

while there is no grey in the diagram. Palpalpalpal 20:32, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Herring Gull[edit]

My understanding is that this is no longer considered to be a good example. see [1]. However there is greenish warbler [2] which is. Wilmot1 05:06, 9 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Other examples[edit]

These are relatively small scale examples that are listed. It escapes me at the moment, but isn't the canonical example some "species" of bird found the whole world over? --Belg4mit (talk) 00:27, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if domestic dogs might be an example of this. All dogs are considered one species, but is it physically even possible for a chihuahua to breed with a great dane? Worth some research, particularly given that an average reader will be able to better visualize this concept in dogs than some bird species. postdlf (talk) 15:55, 9 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to see the question of dog breeds explicitly addressed in the article - Are dog breeds an example of a ring species or are they not? (if not, why not) ) 28 March 2011 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.137.143.161 (talk) 16:17, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No, because they fail the requirement that geographically separate populations be incapable of interbreeding. --Belg4mit (talk) 06:04, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Have there been any tests to establish whether these species CANnot breed, or simply do not? Would artificial procedures produce viable offspring? 80.7.95.188 (talk) 23:34, 9 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Do not is the same as cannot in the wild. Behavioral incompatibility is just as strong a barrier as genetic incompatibility, and will eventually become genetic incompatibility because of drift. So the possibility of artificial procedures producing viable offspring is wholly irrelevant. --69.209.75.199 (talk) 08:43, 11 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Practically it's meaningless but it's not irrelevant to the issue of Speciation for those trying to find a very narrow definition.--70.128.114.23 (talk) 04:39, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Link to Youtube video[edit]

Why is there a link to a Youtube user's video at the bottom? It's a good video, but it should not count as a source or reference... that is reserved for 'verifiable' works e.g. BBC news articles or referenced papers, no? 93.19.150.5 (talk) 16:00, 12 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ensatina[edit]

I see that Ensatina has been removed as an example of a ring species. I'm aware of the dispute over the last few years about Ensatina as a good example of a ring species, but it's given as an example in so many textbooks and popular science books, it's quite conspicuous by its absence. There ought to be a short section included in this article about Ensatina and the ways it does and does not conform to the concept of ring species. Peter G Werner (talk) 21:43, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Analogies in linguistics[edit]

It would be good to add a link here to the analogous phenomenon in linguistics, I.e. Mutual intelligibility, where languages may change gradually over a geographic space and become sperate languages. Fig (talk) 10:18, 18 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I guess you mean Dialect continuum? It is an interesting analogy, but I do not know how it would be integrated in the article without it becoming original research. Besides, a clean Ring Species goes around in a ring, and I do not know of any dialect continuum that goes around a mountain or a geographic pole. Mlewan (talk) 19:01, 18 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If you can provide a reliable source where an author create a parallel, then it could possibly be included. However, I highly doubt any source will correlate dialects to species. Andrew. Z. Colvin • Talk 06:59, 14 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Updates needed, see Coyne[edit]

There are no ring species « Why Evolution Is True by Jerry Coyne provides links to papers superseding the studies cited in this article: for example, Alcaide, Miguel; Scordato, Elizabeth S. C.; Price, Trevor D.; Irwin, Darren E. (2014). "Genomic divergence in a ring species complex". Nature. 511 (7507). Nature Publishing Group: 83–85. doi:10.1038/nature13285. Retrieved 24 August 2016. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) . Also, The herring gull complex is not a ring species gives open access to pdf of the paper, "Electronic Appendix" in our article seems to be a dead link. . . dave souza, talk 06:28, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I will try to work on this article, adding up-to-date research as soon as I can. It needs a major overhaul and most certainly needs the include the dissenting research. Evidence of common descent#Ring species has a more up-to-date synopsis of ring species work and includes far more proposed examples than listed here. Andrew. Z. Colvin • Talk 06:55, 14 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]