[muawiyah]

Take a good look at where the methylation is located ~ I simply say "outside" ~ but if you want to say "hooked in" or "substituted" or whatever for any particular chunk of methylation do so. I don't care one way or the other. The genes are still there no matter what.

Lumping foxes, wolves, dogs, jackels and a variety of other animals into the same family is not a problem.

The problem arises out of the idea that DOGS and WOLVES and COYOTES which can and do breed freely, prolifically if we let them, and in the most fertile manner are DIFFERENT SPECIES ~ not in your wildest imagination ~ it would be like pronouncing Black Humans to be a different species than White Humans.

I'm sorry. Does not compute. Doesn't work. Even isolation to separate ranges (Northern high latitudes and Equator) is insufficient to justify identifying mere racial differences as constituting the basis of declaring a group to be a species.

As Shakira sang, "the hips don't lie".

[allmendream]

How about Tigers and Lions?

They can breed fertile offspring - and until humans reduced their ranges - their ranges used to overlap.

Are Tigers and Lions, according to your unique and peculiar “system”, different species?

[allmendream]

Take a good look at where the methylation is located. It is not "outside" the double helix but inside. It is not "substituted" for anything - it is added to the nucleic acid base inside the double helix phosphate backbones. Neither is it a system "outside" of DNA - it is a system for regulating the expression of DNA.