semi-species

Curtis Clark jcclark at CSUPOMONA.EDU
Mon Oct 11 21:27:08 CDT 1999


At 08:53 PM 10/11/99 -0700, Ken Kinman wrote:
>Frederick,
>    Now that I think about it, I think we were both incorrect in calling a
>semi-species "a species".  Actually it is the superspecies which is "a
>species" caught in the process of becoming two species.  A superspecies is
>made up two semi-species.  Once the two semi-species differentiate into
two
>separate species, the superspecies they made up then becomes a "species
>group".

There is an entirely different use of the term "semispecies" as a unit of a
syngameon (see Verne Grant's plant speciation books for details).
Semispecies are perfectly good morphological species that have the
misfortune to occasionally hybridize with one another, and a syngameon is a
group of such hybridizing semispecies.


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