• https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/tech...ets-of-evolution/ar-AAxUobQ?OCID=ansmsnnews11
© Provided by AFP For the planet's 7.6 billion people, 500 million house sparrows, or 100,000 sandpipers, genetic diversity "is about the same," Mark Stoeckle from the Rockefeller University in New York told AFP
"The simplest interpretation is that life is always evolving," said Stoeckle.
"It is more likely that -- at all times in evolution -- the animals alive at that point arose relatively recently."
In this view, a species only lasts a certain amount of time before it either evolves into something new or goes extinct.
And yet -- another unexpected finding from the study -- species have very clear genetic boundaries, and there's nothing much in between.
"If individuals are stars, then species are galaxies," said Thaler. "They are compact clusters in the vastness of empty sequence space."
The absence of "in-between" species is something that also perplexed Darwin, he said.
© Provided by AFP For the planet's 7.6 billion people, 500 million house sparrows, or 100,000 sandpipers, genetic diversity "is about the same," Mark Stoeckle from the Rockefeller University in New York told AFP
"The simplest interpretation is that life is always evolving," said Stoeckle.
"It is more likely that -- at all times in evolution -- the animals alive at that point arose relatively recently."
In this view, a species only lasts a certain amount of time before it either evolves into something new or goes extinct.
And yet -- another unexpected finding from the study -- species have very clear genetic boundaries, and there's nothing much in between.
"If individuals are stars, then species are galaxies," said Thaler. "They are compact clusters in the vastness of empty sequence space."
The absence of "in-between" species is something that also perplexed Darwin, he said.