Taxacom: TAXACOM -- the long goodbye

Thu Dec 11 01:00:38 CST 2025

Hi,

I study sawflies with my colleagues, using both genetic (including genomic) and morphological approaches. Parthenogeny is common in this group. It is not unusual for a species to be parthenogenetic in some regions while remaining sexual elsewhere. In some cases, sexual reproduction occurs only rarely. There is a great deal of variation in these reproductive systems.

We are also quite confident that some (perhaps most) parthenogenetic "species" are actually strains derived from sexual species, effectively leaving the sexual species paraphyletic. These strains frequently occur in sympatry with their parental sexual species. Some of the parthenogenetic strains are likely quite old, having accumulated morphological differences, and they are often ecologically differentiated as well.

We have often discussed these issues from a species delimitation perspective. Personally, I consider many of these parthenogenetic lineages to be distinct enough to treat as good species: they are morphologically and genetically diagnosable and occupy their own ecological niches, although not always. A parthenogenetic lineage is never regarded as valid without additional supporting evidence. They are diagnosable, even though they are often genetically very close to their parental sexual species, which may appear paraphyletic in genetic analyses.

In my opinion at least some of these asexual lineages are distinct enough to be regarded valid at species level.

Sincerely,

Marko Mutanen

-----Original Message-----
From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at lists.ku.edu> On Behalf Of Denis Brothers via Taxacom
Sent: keskiviikko 10. joulukuuta 2025 23.32
To: Douglas Yanega <dyanega at gmail.com>; taxacom at lists.ku.edu
Subject: Re: Taxacom: TAXACOM -- the long goodbye

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) https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffaculty.ucr.edu%2F~heraty%2Fyanega.html&data%7C02%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C113d152f1c2d4e0e1bbb08de3882ffd7%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C639010332476202554%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=uX9YbPXnyO8kfnkr0glTp2gCBOseJSdb87t%2Bd%2BwlUEk%3D&reserved=0<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Furl.za.m.mimecastprotect.com%2Fs%2FWNX6C66VKkCr70B66umiVF5NvYX%3Fdomain%3Dfaculty.ucr.edu&data%7C02%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C113d152f1c2d4e0e1bbb08de3882ffd7%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C639010332476236462%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdataSNwNg5L4FRgzkNy44%2FqWPvWDAEmKxfAsKptge28DgQ%3D&reserved=0>
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