If a man and a woman have an infertile child, could the parents be different species?

Question

How long would it take for an isolated community of people to mutate far enough to become a new species? 1000 years? 10000 year? 1 million years?

(I genuinely have no idea how long speciation takes, this is a serious question)

To respond to 1000 Man Embassy, this is theoretical. Like if we went and lived on Mars for instance. Or if a group of people just decided to cut all contact with other humans.

Not likely, but I just wondered how long it would take.

SouthClaiforLifeSD - Infertile? No, I think you're right, I meant sterile, like mules, the offspring of a horse and a donkey.

Answer 1

Their relay is no telling how many generations it would take for allopatric species to occur. Its a random chance event which is ground by the need to be able to breed with your peers. If suddenly you lost the human sperm binding receptor your eggs could not receive genes from your mate and you would be infertile.

It is however possible for to gain an extra receptor from through parallel gene flow. Lets say theirs a virus that infects two closely related species. If that virus includes a copy of the other species receptor. If your germ line got infected you could then make a child that would be able to breed with both species. However due to recombination their children would be 1/2 as likely to have both receptors and their children would be 1/4 as likely and so on until the ability to interbred was completely lost. If one of the offspring lost the original receptor then they would still be able to bread with the population that had the new receptor and with the other species but not with your peers in effect becoming a member of a different species.

You could inter bread to produce an sexual infertile children who would just reproduce parthenogenticaly(asexual). In nature parthenogentic and hybridogenic species are more common than 'normal' sexual species. Look up Cnemidophorus tigris which is the hybrid of two sexual species C. neomexicanus and C. inornatus.

Answer 2

if you notice your question, INFERTILE CHILD is an oxymoron...

either the woman gets pregnant with a child, whether a healthy one or one that ends in miscarriage, or she is infertile because the man is impotent or she for some reason isn't producing eggs to permit fertility.

Assuming the man and woman were two different species, which, by the way, has never been recorded as far as human record history has to show, then the couple would just be INFERTILE. Of course, there are many reasons for this, a few of which i have already explained.

There has never been a recorded human DNA that is so different that it can be classified as its own species. Even if there was one, wouldn't that "non-human" need an equal kind opposite sex partner to initiate the new lineage? think about it!

random mutatin and recombination of genes to form a completely new species to me is somewhat a bogus wishful thinking theory!

Answer 3

A serious answer then, Any pockets of humanity that would have been on the path to their species-hood would have recently been drawn into the fold of larger humanity in the last 50 years. The clock then starts all over again. but communities aren't isolated anymore, so your theory doesn't hold up.
No one has yet defined what level of genetic difference would be considered a different species. I think the definition would have to be a bit subjective, for my guess. I'd say 10,000 years, but then you would have to integrate genetic mutation of an isolated group. Incidentaly there are isolated groups on earth,, rain forests of south america,, some peoples of northern asia,, all have shown no move twords what you think. You would need to talk to a genetic scientist for a better answer.

Answer 4

It would take at least 100s of thousands of years. Some species can separate a lot faster, but their generations go by a lot faster too.

We are still wondering if Homo Sapiens and Neadertals could interbreed (and probably produce infertile offspring) and those two species were separated by probably 100,000 years or more.

Answer 5

I think it can happen pretty quickly, in a thousand years or so. I rember reading an article about, I don't know, a species of birds or something who lived on different islands (no, not the islands Darmwin visited) and within a pretty quick time they couldn't interbreed anymore. Maybe it was more like... 500 years... Sorry, I really don't know anymore. How useless is this, haha!