subspecies summary

[Bill Shear]

Nice job by Ken of summarizing the discussion.

It would seem the practical procedure (I guess that was the impetus behind
the original question) would be to consider naming subspecies only in cases
in which the group was already well-studied, or in which fairly exhaustive
sampling has been carried out by you, so that you can (if you think it
desirable) delimit diagnosible populations that still seem to exchange
genes with each other--show intergradation at the margins of their
distributions.  It would be bad form to name a subspecies on the basis of a
single or a few divergent specimen(s).  There is considerable sentiment in
the Taxacom community not to name subspecies at all.

Could someone clarify the question of naming plant populations which differ
in ploidy, and hence are probably reproductively isolated?  I gather that
some will name these as species, others as subspecies (sympatric
subspecies, no less!)  But to name them as subspecies seems to me to
violate both the BSC and the PSC (which are really the same thing anyway).

Bill Shear
Department of Biology
Hampden-Sydney College
Hampden-Sydney VA 23943
(804)223-6172
FAX (804)223-6374
email<bills at hsc.edu>