A couple weeks ago or so there was a thread on hybrids between Terrapene carolina and T. ornata. I was very curious about this, but as I have mentioned I cannot read this list every day.
Does it happen commonly in nature? Does it matter which species is the female and which is male? If either species can be either sex, do the different combinations produce different progeny? (For horses and donkeys, the progeny are mules and hinnies.... but I forget which combination makes which type of hybrid.) I find this subject particularly fascinating because of a general interest in biology, and over the past year or two have been studying the differences among views of literal creationists, theistic evolutionists, and agnostic or atheistic evolutionists. Literal (6-day, young earth) creationists say that every thing is now the way it was created, so we will not intermediates between species. I know of a few situations where this will occur, and I bet there might really be many pairs of species that produce progeny.
Bill, Warrior Biologist
