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?
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