[HN Gopher] The Sparrow with Four Sexes (2016) ___________________________________________________________________ The Sparrow with Four Sexes (2016) Author : 0DHm2CxO7Lb3 Score : 34 points Date : 2020-11-26 20:05 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.nature.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com) | loa_in_ wrote: | It sounds like they're evolving into separate species. | | Indeed it's one definition of a species that it's a population | that can mate within it's group. So if they can no longer breed | with each other, are they same species or not? | pcl wrote: | Ring species are a weird and fascinating corner case of that | definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species | gumby wrote: | Before the invention of radio this was a property of language | as well. Famously you could walk from Paris to Rome and every | village could speak comfortably and naturally with its | neighbors, yet by the time you got to Rome they spoke a | language essentially incomprehensible to Parisians. | monkeycantype wrote: | 30 yrs ago, I rode my bike from East Berlin to Amsterdam, | hopping from tiny village to tiny village. I kept out of | cities so I could sleep in the forest at night and it | seemed as if the the local dialect drifted town by town | from deutsch to dutch | jacquesm wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_German | rcollyer wrote: | They do breed with each other: a-males mate with b-females, and | vice versa, where a/b is the new sex gene. | geofft wrote: | If I'm reading right, the two groups can _only_ breed with each | other. That is, white-striped males and tan-striped females can | breed, as can white-striped females and tan-striped males. (And | the offspring are about half white-striped and half tan- | striped.) | | So it's not speciation, any more than sexes themselves are | speciation. | bregma wrote: | Just wait until you learn about the sex life of hexaploid | species... an offspring needs parents of at least 3 different | sexes. | mkl wrote: | (2016) | | Discussion at the time: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027132 | ncmncm wrote: | Crazy-complicated sexes are extremely common in the plant world, | probably an adaptation to sessile life and difficult seed | propagation. | | I.e., I would guess that plants that have easy seed propagation | have less complicated sexes, but I don't know. | [deleted] | kleer001 wrote: | Then there's mushrooms... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2020-11-26 23:00 UTC)