In biology, a ring species is a connected series of neighbouring populations, each of which can interbreed with closely sited related populations, but for which there exist at least two "end" populations in the series, which are too distantly related to interbreed, though there is a potential gene flow between each "linked" population. Such non-breeding, though genetically connected, "end" populations may co-exist in the same region thus closing a "ring". The German term Rassenkreis, meaning a ring of populations, is also used.
Ring species provide important evidence of evolution in that they illustrate what happens over time as populations genetically diverge, and are special because they represent in living populations what normally happens over time between long deceased ancestor populations and living populations, in which the intermediates have become extinct. Richard Dawkins observes that ring species "are only showing us in the spatial dimension something that must always happen in the time dimension."[1]
Formally, the issue is that interfertility (ability to interbreed) is not a transitive relation – if A can breed with B, and B can breed with C, it does not follow that A can breed with C – and thus does not define an equivalence relation. A ring species is a species that exhibits a counterexample to transitivity.[2]
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