Reid sent me this article by science writer Carl Zimmer (he’s good– Darren quotes his book on primitive whales and whale evo elsewhere). It is an interesting article, but I have some reservations. I wrote to Reid:
“Interesting, and I like Zimmer, but I have my doubts. Not that the effect mentioned by Zimmer doesn’t exist, and there are more examples– Ruddy and White- headed ducks in Europe, where the American Ruddy is mixing with the native, Black ducks and Mallards in the US, where humans have cancelled the Pleistocene glacial separation…
“But..
“(1) I think humans may also SPLIT populations– by making “islands”..
“(2) Some sympatric speciation has been determined to exist — speciation in the same habitat, without regard for humans.
“In the long run, I’d suspect that these factors might cancel each other out– though somebody would have to do some awfully fuzzy math, with little existing data!”
Readers?