New Species Connection:
New species are very similar to the distinctions between different instruments. In marching band, the brass family in particular have very similar looking instruments, which makes it hard to tell if they are different instruments at all. In nature, a species is a group of animals, plants etc. that can produce fertile offspring. These are often caused by separation through either allopatric specification, which is caused by geographic isolation, peripatric specification, which is a small population separated by rare genetic traits, parapatric specification, which is no physical barrier, but reproduction only happens by neighbors, sympatric specification, which is caused by exploiting a new niche without a physical barrier, and adaptive radiation, which is when many species evolve from a common ancestor to exploit different niches. This same idea happened in the creation of new instruments. Obviously instruments can’t reproduce, but there are still traits that help people tell them apart. Separation is also huge in marching bands. If a certain instrument is isolated to a specific region for long enough, through tiny changes, it changes into something completely different than where it started. An example of this separation creating different species of instruments is between the bass trumpet, the valve trombone, the baritone, and the euphonium. These 4 instruments serve basically the same purpose. They all play in the same tenor range, and they all use valves to change the note. To an untrained ear, without looking they are basically the same instrument. The euphonium is the most common of these by a lot, but it's very common for schools to also have a valve trombone, and baritone. The reason for the different names of these similar instruments is because they were separated for a long time. They also evolved in different ways. The valve trombone is just a trombone without the slide, and is closely related to the trombone in all other ways. The bass trumpet is just a normal trumpet but much lower. The baritone and euphonium are cousins created in a very similar way. The reason that these are all different “species” is because they were invented at different places, and at different times. The separation that caused these similar sounding instruments to all have different names is the exact same kind of separation that creates one species to split into two.
