# Instant Monsters *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 19 Mar 2002* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### maa32 *19 Mar 2002, 03:26* Here is one more interesting lecture that talks about the creation of instant species. If you've had enough polyploidy, ignore it, but its terms are pretty cool. It tells that polyploidy is the only way to create an instant monster or a new species! " 'Instant Species' and Hopeful Monsters Is it possible to create a new species instantaneously, in one fell swoop? This idea was very popular when Mendelian genetics were rediscovered and mutations were studied. But it turns out (not unexpectedly) that an organism is a highly complex whole in which many parts must cooperate. Large changes tend not to make such a complex whole better, but tend to completely spoil at least one complex part of the whole. There is one clearly documented instance of 'instant speciation' which is very rare in animals, but common in plants: Polyploidy (having more than 2 sets of chromosomes as in a normal diploid individual). Individual: 2 sets of chromosomes (diploid) Sex cells; 1 set of chromosome (haploid) Combination of individuals of different species (with different sets of chromosomes) is not possible because the two different chromosomes can not pair up. A can not pair with B, but if individuals have double sets of chromosomes, the body-cells can be AABB, the sex cells AB. In reality, this occurs both with doubling chromosomes within a species, or by doubling genes during hybridization of two species. " ---