I'm sure he did, and that he understood it. Unfortunately, when you read it however, you obviously did so looking for cheap excuses to ignore and ridicule what it says, instead of reading it for content and elucidation.
"These conclusions were based on broad patterns in the distribution and relationships of many species. But determining how speciation occurs in any particular case can be difficult,"
(NO SHIT?)
How old are you, twelve?
"because we are usually only presented with the outcome"
(all ToE ever gives us is the outcome, and speculation of that outcome!)
Why are you lying? The author said that "we are *USUALLY* only presented with...", and then goes on to describe a case where the intermediates are still extant and available for study. Did you not even understand the article, or were you too busy looking for words you could highlight out of context so you could prance around and giggle about them, or are you purposely trying to mislead Freepers about its content? This is not a rhetorical question -- please respond.
"of the process and we often have no"
(NEVER is rendered OFTEN by dishonest evolutionists)
No, "often" means "often", as the rest of the article makes clear. Again, why are you lying about what the author is actually saying? And feel free to please offer citations supporting your false claim that there is "NEVER" a record of a common ancestor. Good luck proving that negative, but hey, it's *your* claim.
"record of their common ancestor or"
(NO SHIT!)
I revise my estimate downwards -- ten, perhaps?
"In 1949, Robert Stebbins5 described a fascinating pattern of geographical variation in these salamanders: Two distinct forms of Ensatina salamanders, differing dramatically in color, coexist in southern California and interbreed there only rarely."
(This must mean they are humping continuously!)
No, it "must mean" you have problems with reading comprehension. And I must yet again revise downward my estimate of your intellectual and emotional age.
"The two groups gradually became different as they moved south. When they met again in southern California, the two expanding fronts were so different that they rarely interbred, and were therefore different species."
So we see that they are TWO different species that RARELY interbred...
Your poor reading comprehension is acting up again. They "rarely" interbreed because they only seldom interbreed at all in the northern part of the southern overlap region, and don't interbreed at ALL in the *southern* end of the range. As the VERY NEXT SENTENCE goes on to say:
To the south near Cuyamaca State Park, klauberi and eschscholtzi meet and apparently fail to interbreed under natural conditions even though they are narrowly sympatric.Also:
At the southernmost area of contact, the two forms are sympatric with no evidence of past or present hybridization (13, 14).And when they do interbreed in the north, the results are hybrids, not true-bred offspring. You'd have known this if you had bothered to actually *read* the links, instead of quote-mining them for something you could twist into a cheap excuse to ridicule something you don't understand.
Furthermore, scientists like to use tentative words just to play it safe -- anyone employing a word like "never" (as you are so fond of doing) is eventually going to get tripped up by some bizarre unique exception at least once. Plus, as I pointed out earlier, it's hard to actually prove such a negative (unless one has examined every instance on the planet), thus even when there is no evidence whatsoever for something ever happening, in a scientific paper that will usually be worded as "rarely occurs", or some variant, just to avoid an unprovable overgeneralization. This is also the reason for the word "apparently" in the passage I quoted, and so on.
you know like Saint Bernard's and Cocker Spaniels are TWO different species. LOL!
No, since a) the frequency of such interbreeding among dogs is a hell of a lot more frequent than can be accurately described as "rarely occurs", and b) the case of the salamanders is of a different type and has been confirmed in many ways (as detailed in the links -- did you not read them?) It's more like how tigers and lions are two different species -- even though they can be artificially induced to interbreed at times.
So stop being an ass, please?
And notice how evolutionists are short on facts, mathematical descriptions, but love to tell these grand stories of life and what MUST have happened...
Are you an idiot or a liar?
As anyone with working reading comprehension will "notice", the links you're childishly ridiculing include *confirmation* of what "must have happened" by providing "facts and mathematical descriptions". Were you unable to grasp them, or are you just lying about the researchers being "short on facts, mathematical descriptions"?Let's review a few, shall we?
"In fact, by analyzing electrophoritic separations of selected enzymes and studying DNA patterns, the two subspecies klauberi and eschscholtzi are different species by every definition. (Wake, Yanev and Brown, 1986) "And that's just a small *sampling* -- I didn't want to overload the post with too many."
A phylogenetic analysis of sequence variation in the mitochondrial gene cytochrome b also shows substantial variation within Ensatina (15). The greatest variation occurs in the north. Within the subspecies oregonensis, picta, and intergrades are several distinct, distantly related haplotypes. There are two monophyletic clades in the complex with respect to this gene. The first includes xanthoptica and eschscholtzii as sister groups; these are the southern subspecies of the coastal arm. The second clade includes klauberi, E. e. croceater, and southern populations of platensis; these are the southernmost parts of the inland arm. These data support Stebbins' biogeographic scenario. "
"Results are derived from three separate kinds of data: morphological, allozymic, and mitochondrial sequences. Morphological data follow earlier analyses (7, 10), but include a much larger data set. A complex-wide study of proteins (19 populations, 5 of which are relevant to this study, using 26 allozymic loci) laid the foundation for subsequent work (12). A first stage examined 25 loci in 20 populations (n per population = 8-22; mean, 13.6) from regions east (East Bay) and north (North Bay) of San Francisco Bay; a second studied 27 loci in 20 East and South Bay populations (n = 2-20; mean, 8.6), and a third used 22 of the most relevant loci in 34 populations (n = 2-19; mean, 7.0) from the North and South Bay. These will be reported as first, second, and third studies in this paper. It is not possible to directly combine these studies, which were done at different times and used some different buffers, in part because of the large number of alleles detected. This complex data set will be published elsewhere, and only the main results are presented here. Nei (21) genetic distances (D) are reported. Sequences of the cytochrome b gene (664-775 bp) constitute the third kind of data."
"Although the distribution of xanthoptica is interrupted by major present-day barriers, the taxon maintains some integrity as a unit, especially with respect to coloration and the monophyly of DNA sequences. Minimal D is 0.08 between North Bay and East Bay localities, and 0.05 between East Bay and South Bay localities. However, between South Bay and North Bay localities there is relatively great and varying divergence (D = 0.15-0.47). The genetic connection between the North Bay and South Bay appears to be via the East Bay; San Francisco Bay and associated Carquinez Straits (north) and Santa Clara Valley (south), which currently interrupt the range, are apparently recent barriers. There are some relatively high D values (to 0.19) between the East Bay and the South Bay (populations likely to be even more divergent have not been included in the same study as yet). There is variation within each of these three areas. D within the North Bay reaches 0.15 (n, number of populations compared = 5), within the East Bay, 0.09 (n = 4), and within the South Bay, 0.31 (n = 6 in each of two studies using different populations). In the eastern part of the South Bay distances are below 0.15, but some western populations are highly divergent from everything studied (these also are the populations with the greatest divergence to North Bay xanthoptica)."
" The highest values of D within oregonensis involved comparisons across the range, between populations along the Pacific Coast and those relatively far inland. For no nearest neighbor comparison is D = 0, and many are in the range D = 0.02-0.07. The third study included 12 populations (a few repeats from the earlier study but mainly different) of oregonensis extending from the Russian River area through the Coast Range to southern Marin County, with a few populations in eastern Sonoma County. Even in this relatively small region genetic diversification is great, with D reaching a high of 0.23 (across the breadth of the range) and 36% of the comparisons exceeding D = 0.15. Near neighbors always have the lowest values, but rarely less than D = 0.04. Genetic distances across the Russian River range from 0.08 to 0.15, suggesting that it has restricted gene flow to some extent. "
" One of these populations (no. 28, n = 19) is similar to xanthoptica in coloration, and another (no. 31, n = 10) is similar to oregonensis. These populations are separated by less than 10 km, but D = 0.34. Both are highly variable (no. 28 has 36 alleles; no. 31 has 34 alleles at 22 loci), but only no. 28 shows signs of limited gene flow from the other taxon (alleles characteristic of oregonensis are present at low frequency for four loci). A third population (no. 24, n = 5), 5 km south of population no. 31, displays coloration somewhat intermediate between oregonensis and xanthoptica, but genetic distances are high to both neighboring populations (0.22 to no. 28; 0.30 to no. 31). There are 32 alleles in the relatively small sample, but no evidence of F1 hybrids. However, the sample is fixed for an otherwise rare allele for malate dehydrogenase (Mdh; EC 1.1.1.37) (found at a frequency of 0.06 in population 31; absent in population 28), fixed for an allele for Acon 1 (EC 4.2.1.3) that is relatively common in population 31 and absent in no. 28, and fixed for an allele for proline depeptidase (Pep-d; EC 3.4.13.9) which is in high frequency in population 28 (0.91) but absent in population 31."
"We examined 26 proteins in 19 populations (maximum of 10 specimens per population) collected throughout the range in order to gain an understanding of the degree of differentiation in the group. Allozyme differentiation is profound, with genetic distances in excess of 0.5 (Rogers or Nei) between populations. Naturally hybridizing populations differ by genetic distances greater than 0.4. (see Genetic distances map Two general classes of color morphs, blotched and unblotched, are segregated geographically, but they do not form discreet genetic units. Both are deeply differentiated, and genetic distances among populations of either class exceed those measured between the classes where they are sympatric in southern California."
"Sequences (644-681 bp) from the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene were obtained for 24 individuals representing the geographic range and morphological diversity of the polytypic salamander ring species Ensatina eschscholtzii. These data were used to estimate the phylogeny of components of the ring to test the biogeographic scenario underlying current interpretations of speciation in this complex. The analysis revealed high levels of nucleotide variation among subspecies. Strong subdivision was evident within the subspecies platensis and oregonensis. The phylogenetic hypothesis of minimum length that is best supported by the data contains one monophyletic group that includes populations from the southern Sierra Nevada and mountains of southern California (croceater, klauberi and southern platensis)and another that includes populations of southern and central coast regions (xanthoptica and eschscholtzii). Samples of oregonensis were typically basal, but their precise branching order was unstable. Both oregonensis and platensis were paraphyletic, with several disparate lineages in oregonensis and a strong north-south dichotemy in platensis. The data were incompatible with a biogeographic model that required all subspecies to be monophyletic but were compatible with slightly modified predictions of a model assuming stepwise colonizations from north to south down the Sierra Nevada and independently down the coast ranges. These features provide strong support for the biogeographic scenario central to the interpretation of Ensatina eschscholtzii as a ring species."
I'm sorry, what was that you were saying about "notice how evolutionists are short on facts, mathematical descriptions"? Are you sure you know what in the hell you're talking about?
EXCEPT it Didn't Not even in their own story, the two species they depict are still interbreeding! Incredible!
What's "incredible" is your poor reading comprehension.
"At the southernmost area of contact, the two forms are sympatric with no evidence of past or present hybridization (13, 14)."And even where they do interbreed elsewhere, it's only in the form of sympatric hybridization. Go look it up.
Probably these Salamanders are producing turtles or something...that will be the next article!
"Probably" you have no real understanding of the article, or evolutionary biology in general, so you're reduced to just making childish non sequiturs.
And they never even observe that the Salamander populations may exhibit different color changes cause the rocks may be of different hues?
You obviously didn't understand the DNA analysis...
Even human beings have different shades of skin based on geographical location.
...due to *genetic* differences as a result of evolution...
Lame!
Yes, your "rebuttals" most certainly are. Try to learn something about evolutionary biology before you again attempt to critique it, please.
This is always used in evolutionary tautologies.
Evolution does not rely on tautologies, although I know that creationists keep trying to claim it does, because of their poor understanding of the subject.
Variation (well established and observed) in species, is suddenly NEW species!
In the cases where it is supported by all the evidence, yes, it is. Gosh, just like Darwin said in 1859...