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Hermaphrodite
A hybrid is the offspring of two different species. Darwin extensively looked at whether hybrids were fertile or sterile, and what that would mean for natural selection.
Hybrid Quotes in The Origin of Species
The The Origin of Species quotes below are all either spoken by Hybrid or refer to Hybrid. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 9
Quotes
The view commonly entertained by naturalists is that species, when intercrossed, have been specially endowed with sterility, in order to prevent their confusion. This view certainly seems at first highly probable, for species living together could hardly have been kept distinct had they been capable of freely crossing. The subject is in many ways important for us, more especially as the sterility of species when first crossed, and that of their hybrid offspring, cannot have been acquired, as I shall show, by the preservation of successive profitable degrees of sterility. It is an incidental result of differences in the reproductive systems of the parent-species.
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First crosses between forms known to be varieties, or sufficiently alike to be considered as varieties, and their mongrel offspring, are very generally, but not, as is so often stated, invariably fertile. Nor is this almost universal and perfect fertility surprising, when it is remembered how liable we are to argue in a circle with respect to varieties in a state of nature; and when we remember that the greater number of varieties have been produced under domestication by the selection of mere external differences, and that they have not been long exposed to uniform conditions of life. It should also be especially kept in mind, that long-continued domestication tends to eliminate sterility, and is therefore little likely to induce this same quality.
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Hybrid Term Timeline in The Origin of Species
The timeline below shows where the term Hybrid appears in The Origin of Species. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...from wild rock-pigeon, since the mixtures generally produced results similar to a rock-pigeon. Additionally, these hybrid pigeons all remained fertile, and modern wild rock-pigeons have proven capable of being domesticated. Given...
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Chapter 9
...culprit. Animals had been studied less than plants, but Darwin noted that breeders found that hybrid offspring became more sterile after being bred with siblings over successive generations—although none of these...
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Laws governing the Sterility of first Crosses and of Hybrids. Darwin noted that hybrids between two species that are difficult to cross (since the crossing...
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...by species: some species cross well with others, and some species are better at creating hybrid offspring that look like them (as opposed to looking like the other species in the...
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Ultimately, Darwin believed that these complex systems of laws did not support the idea that hybrids were infertile simply to limit confusion in nature. He believed that such a complex system...
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Origin and Causes of the Sterility of first Crosses and of Hybrids. Darwin used to believe that sterility in hybrids arose gradually through natural selection and that...
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Darwin believed that the real cause behind sterility in hybrids involved changes to the reproductive system. Hybrids generally arise from unnatural conditions, and these unnatural...
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...crossed varieties on traits other than simply fertility. He drew a distinction between “mongrels” and “hybrids,” arguing that in the first generation of breeding, mongrels were more variable, but in species...
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