For decades, conservationists have considered blue-winged warblers to be a threat to golden-winged warblers, a species being considered for federal Endangered Species protection. Blue-winged warbler populations have declined 66 percent since 1968, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey. The two species are known to frequently interbreed where they co-occur, and scientists have been concerned that the more numerous blue-winged warblers would genetically swamp the rarer golden-wing gene pool.
New research from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Fuller Evolutionary Biology Program shows that, genetically speaking, blue-winged and golden-winged warblers are almost identical. Scientists behind the research say the main differences between the two species are in feather color and pattern, in some cases just a simple matter of dominant or recessive pairings of gene variants, or alleles.
[...] The team investigated the genetic architecture behind the differences between the two warblers by analyzing the genomes of 10 golden-winged and 10 blue-winged warblers from New York, with birds sampled from the Sterling Forest along the New Jersey border to the St. Lawrence River Valley. Across their analysis of the entire genomes of both species, they found only six regions (or less than .03 percent) that showed strong differences. In other words, blue-winged and golden-winged warblers are 99.97 percent alike genetically. One of the differentiating regions has a gene that likely controls yellow/white versus black throat coloration; the black throat of the golden-winged warbler is a Mendellian recessive trait, occurring only in birds that have a pair of recessive alleles of this genetic variant. Another region likely controls body color; the yellow body of blue-winged warblers is likely an incompletely recessive trait.
When blue-winged and golden-winged warblers interbreed, they produce various hybrids, including two forms called the Brewster's Warbler (with a light body and no black throat) and Lawrence's Warbler (with a yellow body and black throat). The new research shows the Brewster's form of golden- and blue-winged warbler hybrids seems to be an expression of dominant traits for throat and body color, whereas the Lawrence's form of hybrid exhibits recessive trait expression for both.
Plumage Genes and Little Else Distinguish the Genomes of Hybridizing Warblers (DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2016.06.034) (DX)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday August 22 2016, @11:19PM
Essentially identical, with only a few genes dictating color differences ... Which one do we put in chains? I'm calling Valladolid to reserve a conference room right away.
Seriously, though: at which genetic similarity do we stop using "species" and start calling them "races"? Dogs and cats are more different than those two birds.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @12:01AM
Dogs don't interbreed with cats.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @12:24AM
Species is generally reserved for organisms that still interbreed in nature.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @11:34PM
When blue-winged and golden-winged warblers interbreed
If they can interbreed then they're not different species now, are they?
(Score: 3, Touché) by bob_super on Monday August 22 2016, @11:44PM
If their hybrid children can have offsprings (unlike lion/tigers horse/zebra and horse/donkey), then my understanding is that they're supposedly the same species.
But maybe someone's added a new Dwarf species category...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @12:42AM
If their hybrid children can have offsprings (unlike lion/tigers horse/zebra and horse/donkey)
I think you forgot man-bear-pig.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Tuesday August 23 2016, @01:39AM
This reminds me a bit about Flickers. There used to be red-shafted northern flickers and yellow-shafted northern flickers, but there's no longer a distinction between the two made. They're both northern flickers.
The main reason is that they interbreed wherever their ranges cross and you get a series of gradations in color. It's a bit like if we were to consider red headed people to be a different species than blonds or brunettes. It doesn't make much sense as the genomes are effectively the same, save for a few genes to determine hair color. And inter-breeding is never an issue.
The real question tends to be at what level of similarity do we draw the line.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Whoever on Tuesday August 23 2016, @02:38AM
Which puts domestic dogs and wolves in the same species.
Really, this problem isn't new. The science of genetics has thrown the classification of organisms into chaos. Remember when the USA tried to save the Red Wolf. The red wolf isn't genetically a distinct species from any other wolves, any more that a yellow labrador is a different species from a black lab.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @11:45PM
(Score: 2) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday August 23 2016, @11:08AM
In all fairness, the experiment has to be done before you know. To my knowledge it has not been disproved that mice and man are different species as of yet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @11:49PM
So... 100*6/20,000 = 0.03. There were about 20k "regions" then. I would guess these "regions" were genes since that is in the range of number of genes per species. I bet "strong differences" means that a p-value was calculated that ended up being less that 0.05. This is, of course, a totally incorrect yet ubiquitous misunderstanding.
That wasn't too hard to guess, and I am fairly confident in it (but have not checked). However, It makes me wonder if anyone has yet written an AI that would use the same type of reasoning to translate journalist speak to scientist/engineer speak.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @11:57PM
I'm fairly sure that can't happen. Engineer speak to journalist speak is a very lossy transformation, and the reverse transformation cannot recover that lost information. (c.w converting 46kb mp3 into flac.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @12:03AM
iTunes Match FTW
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @11:57PM
The ESA appears to have redefined 'species'.
(16) The term “species” includes any subspecies of fish or wildlife or plants, and
any distinct population segment of any species of vertebrate fish or wildlife which
interbreeds when mature.
Seems like the act was justified on scientific needs, but is actually for emotional tree hugging.
The argued purpose is to preserve the gene pool in case mankind needs something later.
The effect is to preserve anything which appears different, even if it doesn't add to the gene pool.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @01:48AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @11:15AM
Well, consider Islamic warblers vs. white Christian warblers. In fact, I think I'll link this article the next time somebody spouts off crap about womb warfare.
Obama is a secret blue warbler!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @02:49AM
"conservationists have considered blue-winged warblers to be a threat to golden-winged warblers, a species being considered for federal Endangered Species protection. Blue-winged warbler populations have declined 66 percent since 1968,"
It should have read "Golden-Winged Warbler populations have declined 66 percent since 1968," as it is clearly written on the American Bird Conservancy page.
https://abcbirds.org/bird/golden-winged-warbler/ [abcbirds.org]