Could it be argued, that in Star Trek, there is actually only one single species?
In TNG it was revealed that all the humanoid species of the Galaxy were seeded by an ancient culture.
One of the definitions of a species is the ability to produce fertile offspring.
And in Star Trek: Voyager, the half-Klingon, half-Human B’Elanna Torres was able to become pregnant from Tom Paris.
So could it be said that, at least Klingons and Humans are the same species, if not all the humanoid races in the galaxy?
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While I will not delve into whether the definition of species needs to be updated (tigers and lions being distinct, but what do you call a liger?).
But Star Trek does have species diversification as far back as Season One when they met the rock creature.
In TNG? It seems like in TOS Kirk & Spock got space aliens to tell them something like that, in one way or another, several times. Vulcans and Romulans of course share an ancestry, and Spock is half-human. And certainly there are many alien species who are eager to roll in the hay with other species that look like different flavors of human.
On the other hand, in TOS they also met various people with different stories, including several races who had through eons of development transcended the state of being that humans were in, others who came from other galaxies, gods, lava creatures, Gorns, sentient cloud creatures, flying brain-infecting fried eggs, etc etc etc. In TAS there are feline humanoids and others.
I’ve avoided watching most post-TOS Star Trek, but from it’s perspective it seems that there are both many races seeded from common ancestors who got around, and also several ascended ancient races, and also various races and space monsters etc that don’t seem to be humanoid, or are lizard-humanoid etc.
I tend to agree that the main group of recurring humanoids are more accurately breeds of the same species. This is especially true with Romulans and Vulcans, which are separated by only about 2500 years and a self-selection for specific mental abilities. There’s a reason Risa and the Orion slave girls are so universally appreciated.
There are certain human-like species that wouldn’t fit the mold, though, like the J’naii, whose breeding organs include a fibrous husk which is inseminated equally by two of the single-sex organisms.
Anything that is intelligent enough to twist time and space to the degree to travel at warp-speed through deep space then they likely have the ability to twist DNA any which way that they like.
The “oid” of humanoid says it all.
That ancient culture was the dominion. Shape shifters. Same actor too.
Well we can also assume that they have control over genetic engineering so they could tweak offspring.
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