Hey anyone else see this? First hybrid shark found off the coats of Aussieland

[Korrine]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...ff-australia/2012/01/03/gIQAPy00YP_story.html

 

[gofor100]

Very interesting! Thanks for posting this.

-Chad

 

[ejv1013]

Great information thanks

 

[agreeive?fish]

interesting

 

[scapes]

"found off the coats" of aussieland? yes, very interesting :lol:

 

[philter4]

Thanks for the link, I found it a great discovery, and what comes next from me will get me in trouble but it really bothers me because I don't know much about this so when I see something that is not entirely true I wonder about the whole article. My one criticism on the article is naturally occuring hybrids are not that uncommon in the wild, queen blue angels hybridize commonly where the two live together. I can take anyone in a 10 mile stretch of Florida and find hundreds of hybrid angels. In other groups hybrids are also common, species of the genus Gallus (the wild jungle fowl that chickens came from) also hybridize anywhere two species live together (India has both Gallus gallus (the chicken) and G. sonerretii, and Java has G. gallus and G. varius) and in both places hybrids are common. I could keep giving examples but that is my point. One of the biologists quote is as follows:

“To find a wild hybrid animal is unusual,” the scientists wrote in the journal Conservation Genetics. “To find 57 hybrids along 2,000 km [1,240 miles] of coastline is unprecedented.”

Please don't get me wrong, the article and the find are incredible and maybe he was talking about sharks only, but then why didn't he say so.

 

[sean357]

Question

Question

I'm no expert in this but am very curious how they define these as different species. If these two types of black tips are different species then how exactly can they have non-sterile offspring?

Thanks for the link, I found it a great discovery, and what comes next from me will get me in trouble but it really bothers me because I don't know much about this so when I see something that is not entirely true I wonder about the whole article. My one criticism on the article is naturally occuring hybrids are not that uncommon in the wild, queen blue angels hybridize commonly where the two live together. I can take anyone in a 10 mile stretch of Florida and find hundreds of hybrid angels. In other groups hybrids are also common, species of the genus Gallus (the wild jungle fowl that chickens came from) also hybridize anywhere two species live together (India has both Gallus gallus (the chicken) and G. sonerretii, and Java has G. gallus and G. varius) and in both places hybrids are common. I could keep giving examples but that is my point. One of the biologists quote is as follows:

"œTo find a wild hybrid animal is unusual," the scientists wrote in the journal Conservation Genetics. "œTo find 57 hybrids along 2,000 km [1,240 miles] of coastline is unprecedented."

Please don't get me wrong, the article and the find are incredible and maybe he was talking about sharks only, but then why didn't he say so.

 

[Reefing Newbie]

I saw a yahoo article on it.

To answer the hybrid being fetile, they are probably closely enough related to produce fertile offspring. The dog and wolf hybrid is able to reproduce. The black tip sharks that crossed may need reorganization, one may indeed be a subspecies like dogs are of wolfs. This would add a third part to the name of which ever shark may be the subspecies.

 

[philter4]

I saw a yahoo article on it.

To answer the hybrid being fetile, they are probably closely enough related to produce fertile offspring. The dog and wolf hybrid is able to reproduce. The black tip sharks that crossed may need reorganization, one may indeed be a subspecies like dogs are of wolfs. This would add a third part to the name of which ever shark may be the subspecies.

A dog and a wolf are actually the same species, the dog has just been bred to it's current form by humans. They do designate the subspecies of pet dogs as Canis lupis familiaris, but this is artificial as there is no wild population of C. l. familiaris There are many other species that are close enough genetically to be called sister species and these can often produce fertile hybrids. Believe it or not but a small portion of mules are fertile, but they are definitely different species then a horse.

Another example from my previous post are that hybrid Gallus are actually more successful at breeding then pure animals causing populations of G. sonerretti to be endangered over part of their ranges. This is because even though the hybrid is fertile it is not as viable so less eggs hatch and the resulting chicks are less likely to survive. A hybrid male will mate with a red jungle fowl hen, a hybrid hen, or a sonerret's hen, while a pure sonerret's rooster will only mate with a pure or very close to pure hen, and the hens that have mated with hybrids produce very few chicks, none of them pure or viable to the population.

The same thing happens to queen and blue angels, they are common and you can just as easily find hybrids who are not 50/50, one of the parents is a pure queen or blue. I have caught queens that have no crown, or a blue with a small underdeveloped crown, these offspring are obviously the result of a hybrid/pure mating.

 

[Reefing Newbie]

I actually found an article and was editing my post then my comp froze up on me and by time I had good enough service to get here I couldn't edit any more. I found that they are sister species. Evolution hasn't taken them far enough apart genetically to make unviable offspring. They do have differences such as number of vertebrae, length at birth, and length at reproduction age.

 

[larrypoe]

IMO there all the same species, just slightly different to adapt better to there specific range on each end of that range.....which explains the "hybreds" in the middle.

if scientists and bunny huggers had there way, and they were wild, a black horse and a white one would be different species :/.....so would a thoroughbred and a draft horse, or a poodle and a great dain :/

making each little variance in genetic makeup or appearence a different species, makes it easier to list them as "endangered"

 

[deanearp]

Very interesting--thanks for posting.

 

[philter4]

IMO there all the same species, just slightly different to adapt better to there specific range on each end of that range.....which explains the "hybreds" in the middle.

if scientists and bunny huggers had there way, and they were wild, a black horse and a white one would be different species :/.....so would a thoroughbred and a draft horse, or a poodle and a great dain :/

making each little variance in genetic makeup or appearence a different species, makes it easier to list them as "endangered"

I have no idea about bunny huggers, but scientists define a species as having at least a 20% variation in statistical analysis of features like number of teeth, fin ray counts, scale counts, eye diameter compared to snout length, vertebrae counts and so on, this includes DNA and proteins down to the cellular level. A subspecies has less them 20% but more then 10%, anything with less then 10% difference is just variation in an individual, so for them a white horse and a black horse would still be the same species.