Most of the big gulls we see around Port Townsend are Glaucous winged, but
they have rather black wingtips when seen at rest. My expert friends all tell me
these are Glaucous winged x Western hybrids. There are lots of them and their
population seems to be flourishing.

Long ago in high school I was taught that the definition of a species is a
population of individuals that breed among themselves to produce fertile
offspring. If this is right then Glaucous winged and Western must be one species, as
they are certainly achieving this. Maybe some other big gulls belong in this
one species too....

This would not be good news for the tick hunters, but there is hope.
Entomologists studying malaria mosquitoes found that the main vector species in West
Africa was actually six "microspecies" which were separate breeding populations
but distinguishable only by the banding on their chromosomes. Perhaps we all
need to buy DNA sequencers.

Richard Isherwood
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