[Taxacom] Polar bears as subspecies or species

[Frederick W Schueler]

Kenneth Kinman wrote:

> I would not be at all surprised that this occurs in some
> amphibians and reptiles.  There are certainly such occurrences among
> mammals and birds.                

* I fear that this may be a memory of Moore's studies of laboratory 
hybridization of Leopard Frogs in the 1940's. In the 1960's these 
populations were shown to be divided into several perfectly good species 
(though with grizzly x polar bear-like levels of hybridization among 
some peripatric species pairs).

fred schueler
============================================== 

> ****************************************************
> John Grehan wrote,
> Even reproductive information may not introduce any greater
> clarity. I recall (hopefully correctly) the case of a frog species in
> the eastern us where adjacent populations can successfully interbreed,
> but the frogs at each extreme of the range cannot.
> 

------------------------------------------------------------
             Bishops Mills Natural History Centre
           Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
        RR#2 Bishops Mills, Ontario, Canada K0G 1T0
     on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W
       (613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca> http://pinicola.ca
------------------------------------------------------------