A paraspecies (a paraphyletic species) is a species, living or fossil, that gave rise to one or more daughter species without itself becoming extinct. Geographically widespread species that have given rise to one or more daughter species as peripheral isolates without themselves becoming extinct (i.e. through peripatric speciation) are examples of paraspecies.Ackery, P. R., and R. I. Vane-Wright. 1984. Milkweed Butterflies: Their Cladistics and Biology. Cornell University Press, Ithaca. 425 pp.
Paraspecies are expected from evolutionary theory (Crisp and Chandler, 1996), and are empirical realities in many terrestrial and aquatic taxa.Patton, J. L., and M. F. Smith. 1989. Population structure and the genetic and morphologic divergence among pocket gopher species (Genus Thomomys). Pp. 284-304 in: Speciation and its Consequences (D. Otte and J. A. Endler, eds.). Sinauer Associates, Sunderland.Bell, M. A., and S. A. Foster. 1994. The Evolutionary Biology of the Threespine Stickleback. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Examples A well-documented example of a living mammal species that gave rise to another living species is the evolution of the polar bear from the brown bear.
An example of a living plant paraspecies is Pouteria cuspidata, the pouteria trees or eggfruits.
See also
Cladogenesis Anagenesis, also known as "phyletic change", where no branching event occurred (or is known to have occurred)
Notes and references