Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A group of closely related, geographically separated species whose members have evolved from different allopatric populations of the same parent species and can interbreed and produce fertile offspring when brought into contact.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A group of at least two more or less distinct species with approximately parapatric distributions.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

super- +‎ species

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Examples

  • During the many years that I was an armchair adventurer, enjoying books about polar explorers, mountaineers, and round-the-world sailors, it seemed to me that these people were a breed apart, some kind of superspecies specially bred to cope with danger and extreme conditions without so much as a flicker of their steely-eyed gaze.

    Rowing the ATLANTIC Roz Savage 2009

  • During the many years that I was an armchair adventurer, enjoying books about polar explorers, mountaineers, and round-the-world sailors, it seemed to me that these people were a breed apart, some kind of superspecies specially bred to cope with danger and extreme conditions without so much as a flicker of their steely-eyed gaze.

    Rowing the ATLANTIC Roz Savage 2009

  • Two different subspecies of the Cercopithecus superspecies are found in this ecoregion: the Djam-djam or Bale monkey (Cercopithecus aethiops djamdjamensis, DD), which is restricted to the southern highlands and the black-faced vervet (Cercopithecus aethiops aethiops).

    Ethiopian montane grasslands and woodlands 2008

  • "Drosophila paulistorum Dobzhansky and Pavan is a superspecies which consists of at least five races or incipient species, living in tropical Central and South America (DOBZHANSKanYd SPASSKY19 59; DOBZHANSKEYH, RMANP, AVLOVSKY and SPASSKY19 64).

    On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with... 2009

  • "So somewhere out near Sirius is a gigantic triangle built by an unknown superspecies?

    The Garden of Rama Clarke, Arthur C. 1992

Comments

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  • A superspecies is a group of closely related species that replace one another in geographic sequence. It is equivalent to a subgenus.

    October 9, 2011