Introgression:
A species can split, in what we call speciation, and two or more can fuse into one; the name (if it exists) is “introgression.” (Peter R. Grant and B. Rosemary Grant, Speciation Undone NATURE vol. 507 no. 7491 March 13, 2014 page 178) A team led by a man named Kleindorfer may have found a case. You remember Darwin’s finches. They were his most iconic example of evolution in action. Finches had spread across the island of the Galapagos archipelago with different species evolving to match different niches on different islands.
Well now that seems to be running in reverse. Or maybe species are just going extinct. And a nit picker might say that they never really were species anyway, just local variants, but given the historical importance of their being separate species, and given the amount of envenomed ink spilled over Darwin himself, that’s not going to happen.
As for me, the issue looks extremely important although I can’t say just what question it raises or what question it answers. Perhaps we shall know more one day.
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