... the population of rodents. Unfortunately, I was unable to observe a single successful reproductive event.(1) In order to understand why the two groups could not successfully mate, it was necessary that I understood the biological factors categorizing separate species. There are different ways in which biologists can define a species, one of the most common explanations being the biological species model. This model states that a species is a population able to interbreed to produce viable, fertile offspring.(2) Based on this definition, I was able to infer that the rodents of St. Kitt's and the rodents of Nevis were two different species, because of their apparent inability to produce any offspring with each other. The next question to be asked was how these two species had been differentiated from the other, when they clearly came from the same ancestor. Once I believed the two rodents to be different species, I ...

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