🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <ldsoderb.724677131@reading> David S. Oderberg,
ldsoderb@susssys1.reading.ac.uk writes:
>Could someone please tell me whether artificial breeding/selection has
>so far produced any new species, according to the generally accepted
>definition/s of `species' among biologists (interbreeding capacity etc.)?
>Even including the very latest in biotechnological achievements, has the
>creation of new species been attained?

The most obvious example is Zea mays (maize in Reading).  This species
was bred in Mexico before the conquistadores destroyed the lab notebooks
:-), so wee don't know exactly what process was used.  The domestic apple
is also a species that resulted from human intervention.  Most of the
food you eat comes from extreme variants of the wild species, usually
containg genes that have been introduced from related species.  Many may
be different enough that you would regard them as effectively being new
species.  This has been going on for millennia.

With plants, crossing barriers do not make a particularly effective
criterion for speciation because there are many ways to force crosses
that normally would not happen.  Beyond that, the question of what
consititutes a true species division is controversial enough that I am
not going to touch it.

The latest genetic engineering has not produced any new species, and to
my knowledge, that is not a goal of any of that work.  The benefit of
genetic engineering is that everything can be kept the same except for
one gene, thus changing the species as little as possible in other ways. 
Classic breeding brings in more extraneous genetic material, but genetic
engineering makes it possible to bring material in from a broader range
of organisms.