BSC

[Biology at]

Bill Shear wrote:
>>Is anyone else uncomfortable with "evolutionary tendencies" and "biological
fate?"  When stuff like this can be part of a supposedly scientific concept, I
wonder where the Science Police that are usually so quick to jump on this list
might be.<<
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Terms like 'biological fate' and 'evolutionary role and tendencies' are
certainly vague, kind of wishy-washy, suggesting inevitable destination
(orthogenesis, to throw in another hard-digestible bite!). But if you try to
view them from an ecological point of view they actually begin to make sense:
Species are lineages but they also occupy more or less narrowly defined niches.
The adaptation to a realized niche can be characterized as a constraint, e.g., a
groundwater amphipod has a very limited range of potential adaptive solutions to
environmental changes (to give a graphic example: it is unlikely to develop
wings or metamorphosis in the proximate future). This is its evolutionary role.
The question remains how this part of the ESC can be applied to IDENTIFY
species. I think these terms are just theoretical approximations to DEFINE
species.

Stefan


Stefan Koenemann
Dept. of Biological Sciences
Old Dominion University
Norfolk, VA 23529-0266
USA
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