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But at SOME point, you've got to have the first member of a 'new species' produced, no?
What the hell kind of argument is this? Are you blatantly trying to postulate a faulty argument to try and make your doctrine laden reality-denial stance seem true in your own scrawny mind or are you seriously that misunderstood on the topic of evolution?
What we define a species as is largely dependent on how we define our taxonomies. It is part of the human endeavor to organize, label, and distinguish differences between comparative groups. This tends to ease confusion and makes a clear cut depiction of separation in our minds.
To put it another way, the English language evolved from a host of different languages including but not exclusively Latin and German. But, your line of reasoning asking who the first types of a new species mated with is like asking who the first English speakers spoke with. As any plain idiot could or would be willing to understand, the English language did not just "pop up" overnight.
Rather, the English language, like species development went through long transitional periods in which a hodgepodge of the languages that comprised it were often spoken. In fact, though we still see remnants of these old languages in our vocabulary, they are merely "leftover" traits of a long distant past. Today's English barely resembles its ancestor of the 15th century and the English of that day barely resembled its ancestor of centuries before it. There is no really clear time when "all of a sudden" a more modern-day English just popped up. It's not like Shakespeare's wife gave birth to a kid who popped out saying "Yo, dawg! I's be bangin' up in this biotch!"
Again, in keeping with my original statement, the term language (in so much as how we separate the words spoken between groups of people) is merely an artificial construct of speech. We call things German, French, English, Mandarin Chinese, etc... because they share a certain amount of common characteristics in which we are able to distinguish them as such. In the same fashion, species of animals are depicted in the same manner.
However, with a species, much like with a language, alphabets comprise the whole of the language. However, the species' alphabet is comprised of four letters (A,G,C,T - the chemicals that comprise DNA) and those "letters" create a language that tells the individual creature how to be constructed. Over time, the "words" that explain how to build a species slowly change just as the words that we communicate with slowly change. There is no clear black and white drawing of when precisely a species changes because a "species" is simply an artificial construct of human endeavor. However, there is a point in which animals change/evolve to the point in which it becomes necessary to separate and identify the two for ease of human convenience. In other words, we use the word "Monkey" and "Dolphin" because they define a clear set of characteristics. However, even this is not accurate enough to define what species of monkey or dolphin they are - for that, we often resort to part of our Latin roots!
But at SOME point, you've got to have the first member of a 'new species' produced, no?
In your scenario, if the individual was unable to breed with another, then it would die without reproducing. No speciation event would occur.
Speciation occurs at the population level. Once a population is so different from another population that the two can no longer interbreed and produce viable offspring, it is considered a speciation event. A difference may arise in a single individual and eventually (many generations) spread throughout a population, but it's an accumulation of many differences from multiple sources (individuals) that spread through a population and eventually cause the speciation event.
In your scenario, if the individual was unable to breed with another, then it would die without reproducing. No speciation event would occur.
Speciation occurs at the population level. Once a population is so different from another population that the two can no longer interbreed and produce viable offspring, it is considered a speciation event. A difference may arise in a single individual and eventually (many generations) spread throughout a population, but it's an accumulation of many differences from multiple sources (individuals) that spread through a population and eventually cause the speciation event.
So, a 'population' is 2?
Ok, no prob.
How did we get 2 when there was only 1?
Since the 1 will need a *ahem* partner ya know........
Is there no way to define one species separate from another that is similar?
How can Darwin talk of 'Origin of Species' if you are telling us we cannot possibly know when one has 'originated' and when it hasn't?
No, read what I wrote instead of trying to pick the pepper out of the fly turd. I said that a "Species" is an artificial construct of the human mindset to differentiate two kinds of animals. Most certainly there are distinct differences between different kinds of animals such that as to call them the same thing would be utterly confusing. As a result of this, we have developed a complex taxonomy system in which to separate and isolate the large diversity amongst animals (and plants).
As we try to differentiate between two different animals, we have to have some sort of basis to go by. In Darwin's day, they often used physical characteristics such as the kinds of feathers, beaks, and body style of individual birds to separate one "species" of bird from the other. In today's world, with gene mapping and DNA sequencing, we are actually able to count the number of variable differences between two different birds' DNA sequences. Not only does this allow us to compare how similar they are to one another but also allows for us to map from which ancestors they came from with much more refinement.
I fully agree with many of the depictions used to separate a species from one or the other including the definition you gave me. Make no mistake about that. However, these are indeed human fabrications of distinction without which, we would have no ability to distinguish a polar bear from a carpenter ant.
You seem to be under the grand egotistical assumption that because we label a species as a certain kind of bear that any and all offspring of it regardless of countless generations must always remain bears. Why? That's just stupid and asinine. They don't stay that way because we labeled it a certain species of bear any more than the English language would stay the same because we called it the English language.
Since the 1 will need a *ahem* partner ya know........
No, a population is not made up of two individuals. It takes a lot more than that to have the genetic variation necessary to sustain a population. When I first read your reply, I was thinking to myself, "where on earth did this person get that a population is 2 individuals?" Then I realized that one of my sentences could have been better written..... Here it is again, (bold word added for clarification) "Once a population is so different from another population that the two populations can no longer interbreed and produce viable offspring, it is considered a speciation event."
As long as the two populations can interbreed, they are one species, yes?
So does an entire population suddenly become unable to breed with the other? No, it must happen one at a time.
So the first member that cannot interbreed with any member of either population (since they are all the same species) would be a new species.
But where is his mate?
What on Earth are you talking about? I already explained to you that there are a variety of different ways in which we determine what a species is. It does not necessarily fall into the realm of what can interbreed with what. Though that is a good measure of how we might define a species, it is not in entirety how we define a species.
Again, let me reiterate. The definition of species and how we deduce what is what is largely of human construct. Animals just procreate, survive, and do what they do. They have no concern over what is what unless it's dinner or being looked at as dinner.
There is no such thing as a species just "popping up" one day. That is for the world of Creationists and Intelligent Design folklorists. Rather, small gradients of change over large periods of time produce subtle and intricate changes to various organisms. When looking back at these subtle and intricate changes throughout the fossil record and through mitochondrial DNA triangulation, we find that these small gradients of subtle change add up to a rather diverse and speciated animal and plant kingdom.
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