Quote:
Originally Posted by tore
In theory it works well for many organisms, it would seem, but it sure is hard to check since all organisms in nature don't occupy the same geographical areas and don't all have the same courtship behaviour and so on.
You get further troubles when you get to plants. They hybridize a lot and such evolutionary events are thought to have given rise to a multitude of the species out there. Another problem is this; imagine that species 1 can hybridize with species 2 and 3, but 2 and 3 can't hybridize with eachother. The sexual isolation definition would have to refuse and accept 2 and 3 as the same species at the same time!
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I still hold my ground, but, you are right about plants. Even so, all plants diverge genetically until they can no longer form hybrids (without the help of humans, anyway). The same could be said about the Prokaryote kingdoms. Maybe there is a need to refine the system, but since even plant species head out on different evolutionary paths to the point where they can't form hybrids where they once might have tells me my "reproductive isolation" standard still holds. To me, anyway.