&gt;The search for the red wolf&#x27;s origins have led scientists to a new theory about how evolution actually works<p>A close reading of the (beautiful) story shows that while the red wolf presents a nice narrative, there is little truth in this statement.  It may have caused much hand-wringing among environmentalists, hunters, and government officials — an important conversation and issue in its own right — but scientists remain quite unsurprised.  This is  just another in a long-line of cases where &quot;species&quot; is hard to define.  The old chestnut of &quot;can&#x27;t breed&quot; doesn&#x27;t work in all mammals, much less bacteria where horizontal gene transfer is common.<p>In terms of sequence, it&#x27;s not as fun to look at, but the best example is probably E. coli.  Across all of the E. coli strains only around 40% of the genome is shared in a &quot;core&quot; genome.[1]  At first glance that makes no sense and probably says just as much about our characterization of bacterial species as it does our definition of bacterial species.<p>But, really, who cares?  The article quotes Darwin:<p>&gt;I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other<p>Which is essentially how scientists use it now.  It&#x27;s very convenient for categorization when it is, but often has no valuable meaning.  You can (and should) say the same thing about the definition of life.  Are viruses alive?  It&#x27;s an interesting question, but does it change anything?  It&#x27;s okay for some of the edges to be a bit blurry.  The fluidity of &quot;species&quot; is, I think, one of the cooler aspects of modern biology.  What better way to start teaching kids about evolution and the DNA that connects us all?<p>1: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;journals.plos.org&#x2F;plosgenetics&#x2F;article?id=10.1371&#x2F;journal.pgen.1000344" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;journals.plos.org&#x2F;plosgenetics&#x2F;article?id=10.1371&#x2F;jou...</a>