My first job was a lizard collector. When I was 10 years old my mother saw an ad in the local classifieds for a “lizard catcher”. The University Of New Mexico (UNM) was doing a research project and needed a reliable supplier of some local lizards. We mostly had two types of lizards around town, “blutails” or New Mexico whiptail lizards, and “sanddiggers” or lesser earless lizards. UNM was looking for bluetails. They were offering to pay 10 cents for each NM whiptail we delivered.
The research team, (mostly college girls) were terrible at catching lizards. My little brother (Jimmy) and I were pros at it and caught them by the bucketful. We did this for three summers. We even made 20 cents each for lizards with two tails. At first we thought that they were using the lizards to feed to other reptiles but each time we would deliver them we would place one each in a plexiglass container. They had these set up by the hundreds in a large outside court yard.
Some of the girls on the research team explained to my brother and I that they were doing a study on the mating habits of these lizards. As it turned out the New Mexico whiptail is parthenogenic. The little stripped whiptail, and the western whiptail interbred to produce the New Mexico whiptail, a unisex hybrid. The NM whiptail cannot adapt or evolve as other species do. All NM whiptails are females, its eggs require no fertilization and they are genetic clones of the mother
My question is this, is the New Mexico whiptail an advancement in adaptation or evolution? I maintain that they are not.
While not an apples to apples comparison to the hybridization questions we have discussed below it does illustrate how hybrids even in nature can dilute a gene pool and push out a native species. The New Mexico whiptail primarily lives around trash piles, dry ditches, fences, and where other human artifact abound.
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Vichris
