Not trying or expecting to change anyone’s perspective here, and I won’t belabor the issue further in this topic. I’ll just note that the General Lineage Concept refutes both of these assertions in pretty compelling terms.
1 Like
I see, so it really is a case by case kind of thing. Species mean different things in different plant families due to the way we boxed each taxon?
What about Horizontal Gene flow? Lots of plants graft into each other & can transfer genes horizontally. Russian Plant Breeder was able to exploit this technique to get Graft Induced Variations. He took a very wide hybrid seedling scion & grafted it onto a mature tree he wanted it to resemble. The seeds inside the scion grew into trees that resembled the mature mentor tree rootstock it was grafted onto.
Thanks for the tip, will keep it mind!
That’s EPIC!!! Thank you for the motivation! Problem is do I put an x infront of it or not? Or is it up to me to come up with a name & then let others revise?
Also would the new species I invent be native to where It was created? I mean it’s origin point would be my garden no? Thus it would be native. Native = Origin right?
Evolutionarly speaking, every species originated from plants that may or may have not had their ancestors native to that region. Is Native just as hard to box in as the term species?
I’ve always understand a plant to be Native to the place it originated from.
Would this make the Zuchinni Native to Italy, not the species but specifically the Cultivar Group Cucurbita pepo var. cylindrica?
Or is Native too subjective to be useful? Since any species can eventually evolve to be native to any location it’s currently growing in. It’s how the Native Species got here in the first place.
Native is usually applied to naturally occurring taxa that have had a chance to co-evolve with other native organisms in that area. Anything artificially created and then releases into the wild is most often considered non-native. But as you suggest, once one looks closely at the edge cases for native, you again end up in a semantic wallow. If two species, both native, hybridize in a garden within their native range (and spread from there), and the only human interference was planting them next to each other in the hope they might hybridize, is the result a native? Opinions will vary. The simplest solution is to not worry about the label.
2 Likes
In the example I gave above, with lab-generated hybrid whiptail species, there is no type locality included in the species descriptions. They were produced in a lab in Missouri but the parental lizards came from the SW US.
2 Likes
Here in North America, we use a practical definition of native. If the species was here before 1492, it’s native. Otherwise, it’s not.
Interesting exception: Three Eurasian species of Tragopogon have been introduced to North America, where they are weeds. They are diploid (2n = 12) Tthey occasionally hybridize in the wild, in Eurasia and North America. In North America (but not Eurasia), two of the tetraploid hybrids (2n = 24) have become weedy, sexually reproducing species. They are considered native to North America. This is technically correct, though it feels wrong to me.
Here’s one of the tetraploid, North American “natives,” Tragopogon mirus: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/79330212 One of its parents has purple petals and one has yellow.
4 Likes
Co-Evolve? Is this the same thing as Long-term Naturalization?
I’ve been confused by the difference between Naturalized vs Native.
Also does artificial imply man made, making everything Humans Create Unnatural?
I wonder the difference between Artificial vs Natural Selection, are Homo Sapiens not allowed to influence Nature Naturally? Is every Influence/selection made by Humans always artifical?
Noted. Good Advise!
That definition always bugged me with it’s loopholes & Inconsistencies. Native Americans clearly Brought & Moved plants all over before 1492. By those standards, Corn should be Native.
I also theorize the reason why Asimina triloba & Podophyllum peltatum have such widespread “Native” range is because of Native Americans spreading them all over.
Populations evolve over time in response to their environments. If a population of birds lives in and around oak trees, these oaks are part of their environment and in a variety of ways will influence the evolution these birds. But the birds are also part of the environment experienced by the oaks, and the evolution of the oaks can also be influenced by the birds. They evolve in response to each other, which is called co-evolution. This can happen whether the populations arrived in the same area naturally (without human influence) or artificially (with human influence).
As with almost all definitions, one can find debatable edge cases. In a world dominated by human pollution, habitat and climate alteration, etc. is anything really without human influence? Are things introduced by humans tens of thousands of years ago native? Words mostly mean whatever we use them to mean, not what any definition says.
1 Like
“Co-evolve” refers to a longer process than naturalization. Co-evolution occur when different populations that interact in some way genetically change (usually, both change) as a result of that relationship. Naturalization is generally used for a shorter process, when a species is moved to a new area survives and forms reproducing, long-lasting populations in the new area. (This may result in co-evolution, eventually.) Usually the move is facilitated by humans, but not necessarily.
Native: It was “always” there, or at least not recently moved there by humans recently.
Naturalized: Moved to the place by humans (intentionally or not) and now forming reproducing wild populations.
In your question about artificial vs. natural selection, you get involved in questions about wording that do have deeper implications and do bother scientists and others. Obviously, we humans are part of the natural world, so whatever we do could be considered “natural.” However, a lot of what we do is not at all what would have happened without us and it causes problems for other organisms and for us. Therefore, we find that a lot of times we want to distinguish between the stuff we do and what would happen without us. I think a lot of the time it is important to make that distinction. However, making it seems to separate us from the rest of nature and that’s a problem itself. There’s no good resolution.
Artificial vs natural selection is a technical distinction, one with a niche market, you might say, and closely related even now to its history. When the theory of evolution was first articulated in great detail for a large audience by Darwin, biologists had some idea of what humans could accomplish by choosing to breed certain individuals and not others, to save some seeds but not others. We could change our domesticated animals in significant ways. Darwin’s point was that the same process happens all the time without our intervention and it always has and it has produced the organisms we know. So Darwin and the other scientists trying to communicate his ideas needed terms that let them explain and compare the process with or without humans. Therefore, we talk about artificial vs natural selection though you are correct that artificial selection is a subset of natural selection (if we use “natural selection” in a very broad sense). Still, it’s often a useful distinction.
On a continental scale, using 1492 as a cut-off date for native vs. introduced works well for North America because the only organisms we for sure were introduced here by humans before that were dogs, humans ourselves, and perhaps some parasites of those two species. As you say, native Americans do move plants and animals around. We know that a species of Nicotiana was introduced to Oregon by Native Americans and I suspect that the California Poppy was, too. The sedge species Carex barbarae, used for weaving, was probably developed in cultivation by Native Americans and was certainly moved around a lot. Certain medicinal herbs were widely introduced around the east and Midwest of North America. I think that the evolution of Lomatium species (biscuit-root, Indian parsley, desert parsley) was strongly influenced by human transport of seeds and rhizomes. (I studied Lomatium a little bit.) For applying the labels “introduced” and “native” we need to specify the geography we’re talking about.
3 Likes
and surely we as Homo sapiens also Co-evolve with everything around us? Including the crops we domesticated? Did we change corn or did corn change us?
Co-evolve isn’t the same thing as symbiosis no? It’s not like the Prey & Predator form a symbiosis because thy co-evolved with each other 
Does that make us as Homo sapiens native or not? and I wonder where would new species that evolve go? Like the new Cucumis melo x Cucumis metuliferus landrace, the place I create it is the place it’s native too? Or will the hybrid landrace/new species be native to No where?
Perhaps not everything we do is natural? It’s natural selection if it’s what Homo sapiens do naturally & artificial selection is it’s what Homo sapiens do unnaturally?
Perhaps instead of using natural vs artifical selection, we should use Human selection vs non-human selection? That really is the distinction we are making that also doesn’t have to seperate us from “Natural”, no?
Does Corn count as Native or not Native? and what about all the crop species that native americans domesticated in North America? Lots of Cucurbita maxima Landraces techically should be Native right? Yes Robinia pseduoacacia is I’ve read is both Native & Invasive to North America, soo… Terms & definitions not ideal but work good enough?
ooh! That’s a genus I was interested in getting some seeds & doing some breeding work. How far did the Native Americans get in their domestication efforts? Hoping I can continue where it was left off & not start from scratch.
1 Like
I have no idea. The evidence was mostly lost with the destruction of so much of Native American culture. Lomatium hendersonii seems to have some forms with much larger roots and smaller shoots than others; my colleagues and I suspect that’s a result of selection for big roots. The eastern Columbia Gorge was a major center of trade, concentrated around Celilo Falls. We suspect that the great diversity of Lomatium there, including polyploids (allopolyploids?) resulted in part from humans bringing seeds and roots to trade. New species may have formed there from hybrids that resulted from these human activities. The goal of crop breeding (if it happened) may have been for perfumes or medicines or for seeds for snacks or seasoning, in some cases.
3 Likes
Certainly we do. So the question of whether two interacting species have co-evolved or not is one of degree, not a yes/no. If something has co-evolved with other native species enough that the newness of the relationship no longer seems to matter, because they’ve reached some kind of an equilibrium, it is likely to be considered native. Again, it is a linguistic question as much as a biological one.
1 Like
Any chance I could get seeds from those larger root populations? Did any of your colleagues save any seeds?
WOW! That’s awesome! So Allopolyploids with Chromosome Doubling has been happening with Lomatium? kind of like a Triangle of U in the Brassica genus? How did Chromosomes double in the genus? Might have this lead to the bigger roots?
Allopolyploidy is involved in speciation in many groups of plants. For example, it is rife among the grasses in the tribe Triticeae (wheat, rye, barley, many forage grasses) where it is an on-going topic of study. Polyploidy tends to make cells bigger. This can result in larger plant parts and especially thicker leaves but sometimes it just results in fewer cells per body part. Differences in root size that humans select for when developing cultivated crops are usually due to other factors rather than polyploidy itself, but I know virtually nothing about this.
1 Like
Interesting… Allopolyploidy is just a way to increase root size or introduce new phenotypes but simple selection without Chromosome Doubling is also a way to select for larger roots.
Doesn’t Chromosome Doubling gives me more options to select from? I studied Brassica Triangle of U, 3 core species B. oleracea, B. rapa & B. nigra created B. juncea, B. carinata & B. napus. But what happens if you cross every species including their interspecies offspring? How high can the Chromosome Doubling go?
And what happens if you cross in the cross compatible Raphanus, Sinapis, Eruca, ect?
What does this wide crossing landrace eventually create? a new species? a new genus? or even a new tribe? The whole Brassiceae tribe was created thru ancient Polyploidization, thus it should be possible to do it again! Would this be Evolution or Large-scale Adaptation?