Hello guys,
Forgive me. I am new to the forum and relatively new to studying evolution (I'm an apostate of Christianity and YEC so I'm relatively new to learning about stuff like this) and I have a few questions about how speciation works and how it is detected.
What is the best definition for speciation?
Has speciation ever been observed?If yes, can you cite me some good examples?
If yes, can you prove that this was a case of speciation?
How do you falsify a supposed speciation event?
According to the Talk.Origins archive (one of my favourite resources):
Biological classification is hierarchical; when a new species evolves, it branches at the very lowermost level, and it remains part of all groups it is already in. Anything that evolves from a fruit fly, no matter how much it diverges, would still be classified as a fruit fly, a dipteran, an insect, an arthropod, an animal, and so forth. 1
How then can there be changes in the upper levels of the taxonomy?
One of my creationists friends asked me how and at what point, does a dog become/gives birth to a non-dog.
Thank you for taking time to read (and hopefully answer) these questions. Once again, I'm new to the study of evolution. Hopefully, I will take biology courses in college.
References
1. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB910_1.html