Taxacom: TAXACOM -- the long goodbye

[Richard Pyle]

Nice salvo, Jared!

I?ll confess, my posted question was (at least, in part) an inside joke to long-time Taxacomers.  A non-trivial fraction of the total content of the archives for this list has been devoted to some variant of that particular debate (aka, ?Are species real??), and those who endured those discussions over many years will probably have a pretty good idea of where I stand on the topic (hint: very similar to what you posted below).  I certainly agree that the more powerful modern tools make for more compelling rationalizations about where we draw ?species? lines between sets of populations in nature.  And they may even make them more consistent and repeatable (in some way).

But since you brought up the subjective nature of subspecies, I?ll share my favorite Darwin quote on the matter (from ?On the Origin of Species?, Chapter II):

?Hence, in determining whether a form should be ranked as a species or a variety, the opinion of naturalists having sound judgment and wide experience seems the only guide to follow. We must, however, in many cases, decide by a majority of naturalists, for few well-marked and well-known varieties can be named which have not been ranked as species by at least some competent judges.?

[Note: what Darwin meant by ?variety? corresponds to what we think of as ?subspecies? in zoology.]

My translation of Darwin?s point is:  ?A species is what a community of taxonomists says it is.?

That certainly has been the de-facto definition of ?species? since Linnaeus; and while many of the other more modern definitions are intellectually compelling, none has achieved as wide-spread adoption (de-facto, or otherwise) as this definition.  Maybe someday our community will converge on a definition that is more objectively testable ? but I?m not holding my breath.

Aloha,
Rich

Richard L. Pyle, PhD
Director of EXCORE | Senior Curator of Ichthyology | Database Coordinator for Natural Sciences
Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum
1525 Bernice Street, Honolulu, HI 96817-2704
Office: (808) 848-4115;  Fax: (808) 847-8252
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From: Jared Bernard <bernardj at hawaii.edu>
Sent: Monday, December 8, 2025 10:02 AM
To: Richard Pyle <Deepreef at bishopmuseum.org>; Taxacom (taxacom at lists.ku.edu) <taxacom at lists.ku.edu>
Subject: Re: Taxacom: TAXACOM -- the long goodbye

Nice questions, Richard. Funny, I was just about to say that Taxacom could keep going for another 10 years to end on the 300th anniversary of binomial nomenclature classification system by Linnaeus.

I know what you mean about a continuum, with species complexes, species, and populations that we fight to categorize. I could spew the typical line of pre/postzygotic barriers, the testing of which would be a ton of work to do for each species description! (Studying speciation is difficult enough.) Or I could say that there are numerous species concepts (not just Mayr, but typological, ecological, phylogenetic, recognition, etc.) and that we shouldn't expect a universal species concept -- that "it's all relative", as Darwin wrote to Charles Lyell. Taxonomy is in many ways more of an art than a science (or when looking at the Codes, perhaps more of a bureaucracy). And subspecies seem especially subjective to me. Not to be too heady, but it can be more of a science with biological hypotheses when we use more tools to make conclusions, rather than simply gestalt based on x number of decades looking at specimens. I'm not talking about replacing morphological approaches, only making them better, or with multiple approaches (particularly to account for cryptic species or microbes).

Is there a reason why Taxacom can't just be left to continue? I imagine other listservs shutting down. It seems their managers just hand the torch over instead.

Jared