species or subspecies?

[Don Colless]

Populations showing intransitive breeding relations are an old problem -
discussed in the 1940's in books by Ernst Mayr and Julian Huxley. The
paradigm case was, I seem to remember, a circumpolar ring of gull
populations, that failed to interbreed where the circle closed.

To the best of my knowledge, no one has offered a canonical solution, for
the very good reason that we are dealing with a borderline, where hard,
scholastic definitions don't work. But there's nothing like a bit of good
commonsense in such situations!


                 *****************************************
                 * Don Colless, Div of Entomology, CSIRO,*
                 *    GPO Box 1700, CANBERRA, ACT 2601   *
                 *      donc at spider.ento.csiro.au        *
                 *          tel: (02)62464270            *
                 *    Tuz li munz est miens envirun      *
                 *****************************************