Taxacom: TAXACOM -- the long goodbye

Wed Dec 10 15:31:35 CST 2025

I'm afraid that Doug's approach merely transfers the "problem" to a lower taxonomic level. The nominotypical subspecies then is a paraphyletic taxon. Personally, I have no problem with recognizing paraphyletic species (or even higher taxa where justified).

Denis Brothers

From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at lists.ku.edu> On Behalf Of Douglas Yanega via Taxacom
Sent: Tuesday, 09 December 2025 00:39
To: taxacom at lists.ku.edu
Subject: Re: Taxacom: TAXACOM -- the long goodbye

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Two things I'd like to say:

(1) My appreciation is deep for those who have maintained this list over
the years, but please don't think that my appreciation is diminished in
any way if I suggest that migrating the list to another platform such as
Google Groups would be VERY much worth considering. Such a migration
worked well for the ICZN's private mailing list, I'm betting it can work
well for Taxacom, too.

(2) Rich's prodding, tongue-in-cheek or otherwise, does relate to an
issue I am somewhat struggling with at present, and I think it might be
illuminating:

I am at work on a revision of the basal clade within Phasmatodea, the
relictual genus Timema. People have recognized that some of the species
in the genus are wholly parthenogenetic, and have been so for millions
of years, based on the DNA evidence (which has been heavily scrutinized
and published via peer review). Here's the thing: it appears possible,
maybe even probable, that some of the sexual species have given rise to
*more than one* parthenogenetic species. The parthenogens are allopatric
with the parental lineage, and with one another.

Now, to my mind, these parthenogens should best be classified as
subspecies. Why? Because their exclusion and treatment as separate
species would make the sexual parental lineage paraphyletic. Such a
classification doesn't rely upon the biological species concept, nor
does it rely upon the percentage difference in COI barcodes. It relies
instead upon a phylogeny of populations. It's not the kind of data one
usually is in a position to work with, but I don't think I should ignore
it, if that's what the evidence is.

I would say that we've been at this game long enough to know that MOST
of the time, nature is organized into populations that either interbreed
or don't. We TRY to correlate our use of the term "species" to clusters
of populations in the first category, and MOST of the time the evidence
suggests that the natural world operates this way. Just because we can
find occasional exceptions like "ring species", lateral gene transfer,
or introgressive hybridization, doesn't mean we have to abandon
everything, it just keeps us on our toes. A concept doesn't need to be
perfect, just functional and predictive, like any other hypothesis.

Peace,

--
Doug Yanega Dept. of Entomology Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314 phone: 951-827-4315
FaceBook: Doug Yanega (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
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is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
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