How to Use interbreed in a Sentence

interbreed

verb
Definition of interbreednext
  • The three species can interbreed, and splakes can take on both the color and body shape of both parent species.
    — John Myers, Twin Cities, 11 June 2024
  • But then came a sudden spike in interbreeding in the 1950s.
    — Margaret Osborne, Smithsonian Magazine, 8 Nov. 2023
  • Some of the groups of frogs interbred a lot, whereas others had no hybrids at all.
    — Carl Zimmer, New York Times, 19 Feb. 2024
  • The dire wolf didn't seem to interbreed with other species — as dogs, wolves, coyotes and other canids do.
    — Star Tribune, 28 Jan. 2021
  • Red deer and elk share the same genus and can interbreed even though they are found in the wild on two different continents.
    — Parish Howard, USA TODAY, 6 Nov. 2021
  • In return, the aliens want to interbreed with humans to create a hybrid species.
    — Billy Perrigo, Time, 22 June 2018
  • Various species living at the same time may have met and interbred as well.
    — Manasee Wagh, Popular Mechanics, 1 May 2023
  • But in just the last 70 or so years, the two groups began interbreeding, research from a pair of new papers suggests.
    — Margaret Osborne, Smithsonian Magazine, 8 Nov. 2023
  • The birds showed a preference for birds of the same scent, which keeps the two populations from interbreeding.
    — Jason Daley, Smithsonian, 11 Nov. 2019
  • Two of these tumbleweeds interbred at some point to form a new species, Salsola ryanii, which is about 5 feet in height and nearly as wide.
    — Douglas Main, Newsweek, 29 Dec. 2016
  • Escaped salmon from ocean pens compete with wild fish, and can interbreed with wild fish to yield hybrid offspring that are less fit to survive in the wild, Crabbe said.
    — Washington Post, 29 Oct. 2017
  • In most places, wild ancestors are long gone, so herders don’t have to contend with interbreeding.
    — Discover Magazine, 5 July 2024
  • Each branch, the new study suggests, interbred with the ancestors of living humans.
    — Carl Zimmer, New York Times, 20 Mar. 2018
  • Could the lack of a chin in the Banyoles fossil be a result of interbreeding with Neandertals, who also lacked a chin?
    — Brian Anthony Keeling, The Conversation, 2 May 2023
  • At some point, the wolf interbred with a domestic dog breed, passing along the unique mountaineering gene that persists in the Tibetan mastiff to this day.
    — Jason Daley, Smithsonian, 9 Sep. 2019
  • The new data also show that fall-run and spring-run salmon often interbreed, Anderson says.
    — Elizabeth Pennisi, Science | AAAS, 29 Oct. 2020
  • The question of how long ago and where this interbreeding occurred is still being debated.
    — Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 31 Jan. 2024
  • Even so, our species interbred with both and picked up genetic markers that are still detectable in some people today.
    — Los Angeles Times, 19 Sep. 2019
  • In its place, new waves of migration and conquest, interbreeding and replacement, swept westward across the steppe.
    — Kiona N. Smith, Ars Technica, 11 May 2018
  • Not so in Africans, the story goes, because modern humans and our extinct cousins interbred only outside of Africa.
    — Michael Price, Science | AAAS, 30 Jan. 2020
  • Some of those clues suggest that interbreeding plays a larger role in the formation of new species than previously thought.
    — Jordana Cepelewicz, Washington Post, 6 Mar. 2018
  • These were gradual processes, with the end game being separate and distinct species that should not have been able to interbreed.
    — Gemma Tarlach, Discover Magazine, 15 Mar. 2018
  • These in turn evolved into Neanderthals and Denisovans — though the two continued to interbreed for some time, as the remains at Denisova Cave reveal.
    — Joshua Rapp Learn, Discover Magazine, 30 Nov. 2021
  • This is important since wolves and coyotes can and do interbreed and produce fertile offspring.
    — Ret Talbot, Discover Magazine, 14 Aug. 2023
  • The two hominid groups likely encountered each other in Europe and interbred at times.
    — Jack Knudson, Discover Magazine, 31 Jan. 2024
  • Neither can interbreed with whitetail deer found in Georgia.
    — Parish Howard, USA TODAY, 6 Nov. 2021
  • The two populations don’t interbreed and don’t even communicate with the same dialect, Giles said.
    — Rocky Barker and Brittany Peterson, idahostatesman, 9 July 2017
  • However, the record in more recent times, on the order of a few hundred thousand years ago to a few tens of thousands of years ago, is again complicated by interbreeding.
    — Bradley J. Fikes, sandiegouniontribune.com, 11 Sep. 2017
  • The data also suggest the male Denisovan’s ancestors interbred multiple times with Neanderthals.
    — Byann Gibbons, science.org, 11 July 2024
  • Based on certain genetic similarities between the two species, researchers had an inkling that H. elevatus might have obtained some of its genes via interbreeding between its H. pardalinus ancestors and H. melpomene.
    — Bysean Cummings, science.org, 17 Apr. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'interbreed.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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