Intergeneric hybrids are hybrids between members of two different genera.

To some extent, genus definition is subjective/historical, and so this concept is also a bit subjective and variable.

Some examples of intergeneric hybrids among mammals:

Here are some examples:
The cama is a cross between a male camel and a female lama (Camelus dromedarius, Lama glama). It is not known in the wild and has only been produced by artificial insemination. The other combination (male lama, female camel) doesn’t work.

Similarly, the huarizo is a cross between a male llama and a female alpaca. (Llama glama, Vicugna pacos). These can be produced without artificial insemination. It appears these are sterile.

Sheep and goats are in different genera (Ovis aries, Capra hircus) but there have been plenty of cases of cross breeding outside of laboratory conditions. Despite the fact that the sheep and goat have different numbers of chromosomes, the offspring have sometimes been found to be fertile.

Sloth bears and sun bears have also been interbred, as have sloth bears and asiatic black bears, in captivity.

The “beefalo” is a cross between a buffalo and a cow (Bison bison and Bos taurus), and is regularly fertile. Żubroń is a cross between the European bison and the cow. They can be fertile.

The pumapard is a cross between a leopard and a puma (Panthera pardus, Puma concolor). The offspring tend to be small.

The savannah cat has become moderately popular as a pet, and is a cross between a cat and a serval, (Felis catus, Leptailurus serval).

A wholphin believe it or not is a cross between a false killer whale and a bottlenose dolphin ( Tursiops truncatus, Pseudorca crassidens). These can exist in the wild, and the offspring can be fertile.

The common baboon can mate and produce fertile young with the gelada in the wild (Papio hamadryas, Theropithecus gelada ). Here is a paper on a case:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1026367307470

Wow. That’s nice.

Mules and zebroids (zebra horse hybrid) don’t count because they’re the same genus.

I think there should be more among the cat family, let me look. Checking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felid_hybrid
Now, which of these are inter-genera? You’ve mentioned the savannah and the pumapard. The pumapard is unique in being a hybrid of not just different genera but different sub-families – Pantherinae and Felinae. Among the Felinae there are seven Genera: Pardofelis =? Catopuma, Caracal, Leopardus, Lynx, Puma, Acinonyx, Prionailurus, Otocolobus, and Felis.

In the following chart, species from each of the seven genera are grouped together. So for example the Blynx is not an inter-genera hybrid but the Ocebob is. There are 11 named inter-genera hybrids among the Felidae.

Among plants, you can find crosses between seven different genera in the same plant, if not more. The Belgeara orchid is a cross between seven genera: Brassavola × Cattleya × Encyclia × Guarianthe × Laelia × Rhyncholaelia × Sophronitis

Among birds, the Mulard is a cross between different genera, Muscovy duck (Cairina moschata) and the Pekin/Mallard duck (Anas platyrhynchos). Mulards are sterile.

Also, among cage birds, there’s a hybrid between the Goldfinch (genus Carduelis) and canary (genus Serinus).

I remember hearing about honeyeater hybrids. Most are intra-genera but not all. There’s the hybrid of White-plumed Honeyeater (Lichenostomus penicillatus) and Crescent Honeyeater (Phylidonyris pyrrhopterus) in Australia.

The book “Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World” is 585 pages long and there are about ten hybrids mentioned on each page.

Among fish, the Blood Parrot Cichlid is an inter-genera hybrid, between Paraneetroplus synspilus and Amphilophus citrinellus. “These exotic fish hybrids are prized by collectors, but very hard to take care of due to a number of anatomical deformities resulting from the hybridization process”.

> The book “Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World” is 585 pages long and there are about ten hybrids mentioned on each page.

By far, most of these hybrids are between birds of the same genus. A notable exception is the Superb Bird of Paradise (Lophorina superba), which has been observed to hybridise with three other genera – Ptiloris, Paradigalla and Parotia.

> The common baboon can mate and produce fertile young with the gelada in the wild (Papio hamadryas, Theropithecus gelada ). Here is a paper on a case: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1026367307470

From link “The hybrids were large but developmentally normal”. That sounds like lion-tiger hybrids, large but developmentally normal.

There’s a debate about whether the gelada should be classed as a baboon. Wikipedia says: “Since 1979, it has been customary to place the gelada in its own genus (Theropithecus), though some genetic research suggests that this monkey should be grouped with its papionine (baboon) kin; other researchers have classified the species even farther distant from Papio.”

IMHO, the gelada looks more like a baboon than either does to the mandrill/drill. Other genera of the Tribe Papionini are even more distant, the mangabeys are quite different in both appearance and behaviour. And I’m frankly shocked that anyone could class the macaques in that same “baboon-like” Tribe Papionini.

Am struck by an inconsistency in plurals.
Genus – Genera
Radius – Radii
Platypus – Platypuses

You don’t want to get those mixed up, or you’ll get.:
Radiera
Geni
Plait-a-pie

mollwollfumble said:

Am struck by an inconsistency in plurals.
Genus – Genera
Radius – Radii
Platypus – Platypuses

You don’t want to get those mixed up, or you’ll get.:
Radiera
Geni
Plait-a-pie

There is a tendency to not change the word to pluralise it.
Platypus, Hippopotamus, Lion are 3 examples
We also use this with distance signs on the roads. km not kms etc.

Note that radius and genus are Latin, while platypus is Greek.

It’s classical plural would be platypodes but this is never used in English.

Tamb said:

mollwollfumble said:

Am struck by an inconsistency in plurals.
Genus – Genera
Radius – Radii
Platypus – Platypuses

You don’t want to get those mixed up, or you’ll get.:
Radiera
Geni
Plait-a-pie

There is a tendency to not change the word to pluralise it.
Platypus, Hippopotamus, Lion are 3 examples
We also use this with distance signs on the roads. km not kms etc.

Platycats?

mollwollfumble said:

Am struck by an inconsistency in plurals.
Genus – Genera
Radius – Radii
Platypus – Platypuses

You don’t want to get those mixed up, or you’ll get.:
Radiera
Geni
Plait-a-pie

There’s no inconsistency. Genus and radius are from Latin, but platypus is from Greek (in which language it means “flat foot”). A valid alternative to platypuses would be platypode (cf octopus (“eight-foot”)/octopuses/octopode).

<sigh> Beaten by dv (what a giveaway!)

bob(from black rock) said:

Tamb said:

mollwollfumble said:

Am struck by an inconsistency in plurals.
Genus – Genera
Radius – Radii
Platypus – Platypuses

You don’t want to get those mixed up, or you’ll get.:
Radiera
Geni
Plait-a-pie

There is a tendency to not change the word to pluralise it.
Platypus, Hippopotamus, Lion are 3 examples
We also use this with distance signs on the roads. km not kms etc.

Platycats?

Would a lot of them be platytudes?

> Genus and radius are from Latin

Yes, so why do we use genera, but radii?

> Sheep and goats are in different genera (Ovis aries, Capra hircus) but there have been plenty of cases of cross breeding outside of laboratory conditions. Despite the fact that the sheep and goat have different numbers of chromosomes, the offspring have sometimes been found to be fertile.

“This hybrid had 57 chromosomes, intermediate between sheep (54) and goats (60) and was intermediate between the two parent species in type. … This animal backcrossed in the veterinary college of Nantes to a ram delivered a stillborn and a living male offspring with 54 chromosomes”.

I’ve noticed this before, fertile offspring where parents have different numbers of chromosomes, not between sheep and goats but among rock wallabies. I don’t fully understand how this can happen, but it must happen or it wouldn’t be possible for species to develop different numbers of chromosomes in the first place. For example humans have 46 chromosomes and chimpanzees 48.

Chromosomes can break, producing two smaller chromosomes with the same amount of genetic material. Clearly such a creature could back-cross with the original species if the two small chromosomes happened to be carried together in the same ovum or sperm, but the fertility rate would be reduced. A reduction in the number of chromosomes is more difficult, but can be caused by a translocation from two medium-sized chromosomes into one huge and one tiny chromosome, followed by the loss of the tiny chromosome.

It doesn’t take much in the way of chromosomal disorder to create physical and mental retardation, and early death.

Every hybridisation across differing numbers of chromosomes, every translocation, duplication, inversion and deletion of genetic material within chromosomes must result in reduced fertility. So it can only occur naturally in the Darwinian sense of “survival of the fittest” where fertility is not an issue. But when is that?

> The cama is a cross between a male camel and a female lama (Camelus dromedarius, Lama glama). It is not known in the wild and has only been produced by artificial insemination. The other combination (male lama, female camel) doesn’t work. Similarly, the huarizo is a cross between a male llama and a female alpaca. (Llama glama, Vicugna pacos). These can be produced without artificial insemination. It appears these are sterile.

(Pedant mode) The common name is spelled “llama” and the scientific name spelled “Lama”. (Pedant mode off)

What do we know about the camelids? There are only three genera, all mentioned above, Camelus, Lama & Vicugna. And only six species, or seven if you count the wild camel as different.

Having the alpaca classed with vicuña comes as a shock. The alpaca appears physically much more like a llama than like a vicuña, but I could be fooled by the long wool.

Llama, Lama glama
Guanaco, Lama guanicoe
Vicuña, Vicugna vicugna
Alpaca, Vicugna pacos
Dromedary, Camelus dromedarius
Bactrian camel, Camelus bactrianus
Wild camel, Camelus ferus – looks like the Bactrian but has 77 chromosomes as against 74 for all other camelids. An odd number, that’s odd.

Wikipedia also says on that 77 chromosomes “citation needed”. It’s not mentioned on any of the scientific papers that I saw in Google Scholar. I ought to fix wikipedia by deleting that – perhaps?

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2052.2008.01848.x/full
Compares the mitochondrial DNA of camels and concludes that the Wild and Bactrian diverged 0.7 million years ago, as against roughly five times that timespan for the Dromedary and Bactrian.

http://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2164-8-241
This paper says that Llama and Camel diverged 25 million years ago (as against 11 million from fossil evidence).

That’s a heck of a long evolutionary time for intergeneric hybrids. For example the the Pumapard divergence was “only” 6 to 10 million years ago.

> A wholphin believe it or not is a cross between a false killer whale and a bottlenose dolphin ( Tursiops truncatus, Pseudorca crassidens). These can exist in the wild, and the offspring can be fertile.

I wonder what the divergence distance is for the Wholphin? The two are both from family Delphinidae, making them more similar than for example bottlenose dolphin and (irrawaddy dolphin, harbour porpoise or narwhal). But like the Pumapard they come from different subfamilies, they are not both delphininae. Tentative divergence distance for the Wholphin is 5.3 to 11.6 million years ago.

That 25 million year divergence distance for the Cama doesn’t look plausible.

Wikipedia also says on that 77 chromosomes “citation needed”. It’s not mentioned on any of the scientific papers that I saw in Google Scholar. I ought to fix wikipedia by deleting that – perhaps?

I deleted it.

News Flash
Wikipedia is now very much easier to edit than ever before.
In the past, all changes have to be done in raw html. Now, with the new visual editor, what you see is what you get, and some of the time (not all of the time) you can add a new citation with just a couple of mouse clicks instead of (in the past) sweating over it for half an hour.

mollwollfumble said:

Wikipedia also says on that 77 chromosomes “citation needed”. It’s not mentioned on any of the scientific papers that I saw in Google Scholar. I ought to fix wikipedia by deleting that – perhaps?

I deleted it.

News Flash
Wikipedia is now very much easier to edit than ever before.
In the past, all changes have to be done in raw html. Now, with the new visual editor, what you see is what you get, and some of the time (not all of the time) you can add a new citation with just a couple of mouse clicks instead of (in the past) sweating over it for half an hour.

That was weird. Next attempt to edit (wild Bactrian camel page) wikipedia gave me the old editor. I had to get into “preferences” and uncheck the “disable visual editor while it is in beta” box to get it back.

Try it out. If you’ve ever struggled with the old wikipedia editor you’ll love it.