[Taxacom] barcode of life

[Stephen Thorpe]

but this leads to different factions of "the community" (=different communities) with their own species

better to try to hold on to reproductive isolation as the one true canonical criterion of species boundaries ...




________________________________
From: Richard Pyle <deepreef at bishopmuseum.org>
To: Frederick W. Schueler <bckcdb at istar.ca>
Cc: TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU
Sent: Thu, 1 July, 2010 4:51:39 PM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] barcode of life

At some level, every individual non-clone organism is diagnosable.? All of
these conundrums go away if you embrace taxa as human-defined constructs
(nested sets of organisms), and the definition of what a species (or
subspecies, or genus, or kingdom) is, is what a community of taxonomists
feels best serves the communicative needs of biologists to label as such.? 

Objective? Not really. Consistent across different communities of
taxonomists?? Hardly. More practical/useful than any of the proposed
alternatives?? Two and a half centuries of history would suggest so.

Aloha,
Rich

> -----Original Message-----
> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
> [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of 
> Frederick W. Schueler
> Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2010 4:12 PM
> Cc: TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] barcode of life
> 
> Doug Yanega wrote:
> 
> > What I have yet to see, and would very much like TO see, is for a 
> > barcode proponent to explain the genetic criteria for delimiting 
> > subspecies. Or am I correct that they simply do not believe in 
> > subspecies, thereby - by default - leading to the 
> conclusion that all 
> > genetically diagnosable taxa have to be recognized as species?
> 
> * wasn't it a principle of multivariate phenetic 
> morphometrics, back in the 1970s, that, given enough 
> characters, all *populations* would be diagnosable, and that 
> was the big reason for supporting Wilson & Brown, 1954, in 
> rejecting the classical (zoological) "diagnosis" subspecies 
> as a category?
> 
> It's because, in general, every population is different from 
> all others that some criterion other than difference (whether 
> morphological or genetic), has to be used to define species.
> 
> fred.
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>? ? ? ? ? Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad Bishops Mills 
> Natural History Centre - http://pinicola.ca/bmnhc.htm Thirty 
> Years Later Expedition - 
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>? ? ? ? ? ? http://www.doingnaturalhistory.com/
>? ? ? ? ? http://quietcuratorialtime.blogspot.com/
>? ? ? RR#2 Bishops Mills, Ontario, Canada K0G 1T0
>? ? on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W
>? ? (613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca> http://pinicola.ca/
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