Animal with the Most Subspecies is...?
March 22, 2011 4:44 AM Subscribe
What species of animal has the most subspecies?
Someone was telling a story about how her son is far too energetic and inquisitive in the morning, waking her up to ask things like 'What species of animal has the most subspecies?' The story backfired on me, because now I want to know too. I'm ruling out bugs, microbes and the like, but birds, reptiles and so forth should count I think.
Google foo is failing me at the moment. But I know you all are smarter than me, and have probably had your coffee.
Someone was telling a story about how her son is far too energetic and inquisitive in the morning, waking her up to ask things like 'What species of animal has the most subspecies?' The story backfired on me, because now I want to know too. I'm ruling out bugs, microbes and the like, but birds, reptiles and so forth should count I think.
Google foo is failing me at the moment. But I know you all are smarter than me, and have probably had your coffee.
Since I've heard that bats make up the majority of living mammals (by individual) let's use them as a starting point:
"There are about 1,100 bat species worldwide"
posted by jwells at 5:05 AM on March 22, 2011
"There are about 1,100 bat species worldwide"
posted by jwells at 5:05 AM on March 22, 2011
Response by poster: For the purposes of this question I'm ruling out insects and spiders.
posted by Caravantea at 5:11 AM on March 22, 2011
posted by Caravantea at 5:11 AM on March 22, 2011
There's not one right answer to that question. The problem is that there isn't really a rule you can use to say whether something should be named as a new species, a subspecies, or not need a name at all. And so different people working on the same group might say there are very different numbers of subspecies. Some people don't use the subspecies rank at all.
posted by Akhu at 5:47 AM on March 22, 2011 [5 favorites]
posted by Akhu at 5:47 AM on March 22, 2011 [5 favorites]
This is going to depend very much on whether you want to use the word 'subspecies' in the true scientific sense, or in some kind of hand-waving sense.
A species, in the proper sense, is intended to be pretty much the end-point of classification. Subspecies are variants of a particular species that are capable of interbreeding but are usually geographically separated. And, as Akhu says, it's a bit of a grey area.
The grey wolf (Canis lupus) has quite a lot of subspecies (Wikipedia says 39), including the domestic dog.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 5:51 AM on March 22, 2011 [3 favorites]
A species, in the proper sense, is intended to be pretty much the end-point of classification. Subspecies are variants of a particular species that are capable of interbreeding but are usually geographically separated. And, as Akhu says, it's a bit of a grey area.
The grey wolf (Canis lupus) has quite a lot of subspecies (Wikipedia says 39), including the domestic dog.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 5:51 AM on March 22, 2011 [3 favorites]
Birds come in at 10,000 species, "making them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates."
posted by jquinby at 5:51 AM on March 22, 2011
posted by jquinby at 5:51 AM on March 22, 2011
According to the biological species concept, a species is a population or group of populations whose members have the potential to interbreed with one another in nature to produce fertile offspring.
The ecological species concept is a concept of species in which a species is a set of organisms adapted to a particular set of resources, called a niche, in the environment.
We regard species as genetically discrete (i.e., separate and independent) populational entities, whereas subspecies are taken as genetically non-discrete (confluent) populational entities. Smith, H., Chiszar, D., and Montanucci, R. 1997. Herpetological Review 28(1):13-16
In support of le morte... and Akhu: these are fuzzy concepts at best.
posted by procyon at 6:06 AM on March 22, 2011
The ecological species concept is a concept of species in which a species is a set of organisms adapted to a particular set of resources, called a niche, in the environment.
We regard species as genetically discrete (i.e., separate and independent) populational entities, whereas subspecies are taken as genetically non-discrete (confluent) populational entities. Smith, H., Chiszar, D., and Montanucci, R. 1997. Herpetological Review 28(1):13-16
In support of le morte... and Akhu: these are fuzzy concepts at best.
posted by procyon at 6:06 AM on March 22, 2011
I don't know if this is the definitive answer to your question (or if there can be one), but one place to look is among those animals that have very large ranges. For example, the red fox is found throughout almost the entire northern hemisphere, both Europe and the Americas, and wikipedia lists some 45 subspecies.
posted by drlith at 6:18 AM on March 22, 2011
posted by drlith at 6:18 AM on March 22, 2011
About 40% of all described insect species are beetles.
There are about 1,100 bat species worldwide
Birds come in at 10,000 species
The question is "what species has the most subspecies," not "what order [beetles, bats] or class [birds] has the most species."
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 6:44 AM on March 22, 2011 [5 favorites]
There are about 1,100 bat species worldwide
Birds come in at 10,000 species
The question is "what species has the most subspecies," not "what order [beetles, bats] or class [birds] has the most species."
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 6:44 AM on March 22, 2011 [5 favorites]
The wolf and fox suggestions are very good bets. The correct answer is going to be some species that it has a worldwide distributions, and that is interesting enough that people have bothered to define a large number of subspecies. The Eurasian red squirrel has only 23 subspecies according to Wikipedia, and I'm struggling to come up with any more good guesses.
I would be inclined to define domestic dog breeds as different subspecies, and go with Canis lupus.
posted by nowonmai at 7:08 AM on March 22, 2011
I would be inclined to define domestic dog breeds as different subspecies, and go with Canis lupus.
posted by nowonmai at 7:08 AM on March 22, 2011
There are approximately 110 species of rockfish in the genus Sebastes.
On the flip side, leatherback turtles are the only species remaining in their genus Dermochelys.
posted by just_ducky at 7:34 AM on March 22, 2011
On the flip side, leatherback turtles are the only species remaining in their genus Dermochelys.
posted by just_ducky at 7:34 AM on March 22, 2011
Another suggestion (though with only 12 official subspecies according to Wikipedia) is the Rock Pigeon/Dove. These can also be domesticated and bred into fantastic forms so that's my best suggestion.
I think you need to look for species, as mentioned above, with large/worldwide ranges, that are mobile (lots of breeding among populations which will keep down the speciation (evolution of new species)) and that are domesticated so you have humans breeding subspecies.
posted by hydrobatidae at 7:50 AM on March 22, 2011
I think you need to look for species, as mentioned above, with large/worldwide ranges, that are mobile (lots of breeding among populations which will keep down the speciation (evolution of new species)) and that are domesticated so you have humans breeding subspecies.
posted by hydrobatidae at 7:50 AM on March 22, 2011
I'd have to go with domestic dogs. How many breeds are there? How wildly varying? Yet they are all interfertile, so they're all a single species.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:13 AM on March 22, 2011
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:13 AM on March 22, 2011
Domestic breeds are not really what is meant ny the ecological term subspecies even if you can shoehorn them into a Wikipedia definition.
posted by fshgrl at 10:07 AM on March 22, 2011
posted by fshgrl at 10:07 AM on March 22, 2011
I think you're looking for a small to medium sized, not particularly migratory creature that's not a picky eater and is mostly found in the Northern Hemisphere. Stoats (M. erminea) 37 subspecies; peregrine falcon has 19+; red tailed hawk has 15+; white tailed deer has about 40; pigs have about 20.
My guess would be the garter snake but good luck getting anyone to agree in the number of subspecies or even species on that one.
posted by fshgrl at 10:34 AM on March 22, 2011
My guess would be the garter snake but good luck getting anyone to agree in the number of subspecies or even species on that one.
posted by fshgrl at 10:34 AM on March 22, 2011
Folks, I don't think the question is "What order/family/genus has the most species?", but rather "What species has the most subspecies?"
The latter is a difficult question. Subspecies designations are fuzzy and basically arbitrary. They also change a lot as more research is done and new phylogenies are published. Taxonomists can decide that populations we used to think were several different species are all really one species, or that populations we thought were all one species should actually be broken up into subspecies or different species entirely.
Additionally, it is difficult to pin down exactly what a subspecies is, because it depends on how you define the species in the first place. What constitutes a subspecies depends on the species concept you are working with.
Possibly the most famous species concept is the biological species concept as proposed by Ernst Mayr: "Species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups." (As an aside, this is the only definition of a biological term that I can quote, word for word, from memory. Take from that what you will.)
So let's think about wolves and domestic dogs. These can interbreed, making them one species under the BSC. I'm certainly not an expert on wolves and dogs, but for what it's worth, but Wikipedia says there are 39 recognized subspecies of Canis lupus. Note that all domestic dogs are considered as one subspecies in this list. The number of subspecies would jump way up if you are inclined to also count each breed of domestic dog as a subspecies. I don't think domestic breeds generally qualify as different subspecies (they would just be considered breeds of a subspecies, where breed is another unofficial taxonomic rank below subspecies), but I don't know for sure. Like I said, it's kind of an arbitrary designation.
There are a gazillion more species concepts, but I don't want to define them all here. I just want to point out that they exist, because the question of how many subspecies there are depends on exactly how you define the species in the first place. The subspecies of Canis lupus might all be considered separate species under a different species concept.
---
tl;dr: It depends on how you define a species, and can change over time as newer and better phylogenies are published. Canis lupus is a contender, but only because of different wolf subspecies rather than domestic dog breeds; I suspect that various domestic breeds are not generally given subspecies names. It's all fairly arbitrary.
posted by pemberkins at 1:00 PM on March 22, 2011 [2 favorites]
The latter is a difficult question. Subspecies designations are fuzzy and basically arbitrary. They also change a lot as more research is done and new phylogenies are published. Taxonomists can decide that populations we used to think were several different species are all really one species, or that populations we thought were all one species should actually be broken up into subspecies or different species entirely.
Additionally, it is difficult to pin down exactly what a subspecies is, because it depends on how you define the species in the first place. What constitutes a subspecies depends on the species concept you are working with.
Possibly the most famous species concept is the biological species concept as proposed by Ernst Mayr: "Species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups." (As an aside, this is the only definition of a biological term that I can quote, word for word, from memory. Take from that what you will.)
So let's think about wolves and domestic dogs. These can interbreed, making them one species under the BSC. I'm certainly not an expert on wolves and dogs, but for what it's worth, but Wikipedia says there are 39 recognized subspecies of Canis lupus. Note that all domestic dogs are considered as one subspecies in this list. The number of subspecies would jump way up if you are inclined to also count each breed of domestic dog as a subspecies. I don't think domestic breeds generally qualify as different subspecies (they would just be considered breeds of a subspecies, where breed is another unofficial taxonomic rank below subspecies), but I don't know for sure. Like I said, it's kind of an arbitrary designation.
There are a gazillion more species concepts, but I don't want to define them all here. I just want to point out that they exist, because the question of how many subspecies there are depends on exactly how you define the species in the first place. The subspecies of Canis lupus might all be considered separate species under a different species concept.
---
tl;dr: It depends on how you define a species, and can change over time as newer and better phylogenies are published. Canis lupus is a contender, but only because of different wolf subspecies rather than domestic dog breeds; I suspect that various domestic breeds are not generally given subspecies names. It's all fairly arbitrary.
posted by pemberkins at 1:00 PM on March 22, 2011 [2 favorites]
Subspecies occupy different ecological niches, ex. timber wolf vs desert wolf. They are different enough that there isn't a lot of inter-breeding but similar enough that it can still occur. A lot of this has to do with the elasticity of the original population: lots of variability = lots of potential for locally adapted sub species developing as a successful species expands its range.
posted by fshgrl at 1:05 PM on March 22, 2011
posted by fshgrl at 1:05 PM on March 22, 2011
"When is a Species [of bats] not a Species?" led to The Barcode Library which has a Taxonomy Browser over on their data system site. They don't catalog subspecies as far as a I can see but it might be useful to look at the # of species to see the variation and search from there.
Be aware the numbers in brackets are the # of specimens they've received, not items underneath them. It's also worth noting the # of specimens closely follows "What people worry about the most", so there's tons of rodents, bats, and bugs. There was also 6682 humans submitted since they used GenBank, so primates are over represented. The number of species will probably change a lot as more specimens are submitted too, so these are all up in the air.
The highest species count I found under Animals, excluding Antropods> Insects & Arachnids, was 151 under the genus Etheostoma. Other notable mentions, and this wasn't an exhaustive search BTW:
- Myotis, 108
- Munida, 105
- The family Lumbricidae has 96 under it directly.
- Daphnia, 90
- Mytilus, 86
- Holothuria, 82
- Notropis, 82
- Amynthas, 81
- Alpheus, 79
- Corbicula, 78
- Rana, 77
- Gammarus, 74
- Rattus, 74
- Phrynocephalus, 72
posted by jwells at 8:35 AM on March 23, 2011
Be aware the numbers in brackets are the # of specimens they've received, not items underneath them. It's also worth noting the # of specimens closely follows "What people worry about the most", so there's tons of rodents, bats, and bugs. There was also 6682 humans submitted since they used GenBank, so primates are over represented. The number of species will probably change a lot as more specimens are submitted too, so these are all up in the air.
The highest species count I found under Animals, excluding Antropods> Insects & Arachnids, was 151 under the genus Etheostoma. Other notable mentions, and this wasn't an exhaustive search BTW:
- Myotis, 108
- Munida, 105
- The family Lumbricidae has 96 under it directly.
- Daphnia, 90
- Mytilus, 86
- Holothuria, 82
- Notropis, 82
- Amynthas, 81
- Alpheus, 79
- Corbicula, 78
- Rana, 77
- Gammarus, 74
- Rattus, 74
- Phrynocephalus, 72
posted by jwells at 8:35 AM on March 23, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by TheRaven at 5:05 AM on March 22, 2011 [1 favorite]