Species Concept Question

[Ken Kinman]

Richard Pyle wrote:
Now, suppose throughout most of the relevant nomenclatural history, population "C" was not known, and the two distinct morphotypes, each with relatively broad distributions, were consistently treated as distinct species by all researchers over many decades.  Then, someone discovers population "C".  Are you now tempted to disrupt nomenclatural stability and treat them as conspecifics, or would you prefer to maintain them as distinct, and note a zone of hybridization.
How would you approach the situation differently if population "C" was discovered and known for many years as a single, highly variable species, and only later was it realized that the two endpoints of the variation spectrum were each represented as broadly-distributed but allopatric populations?  Similarly, what if in Pattern 2, only populations "A" and "E" were discovered initially, and named as separate species, and then subsequent research revealed the existence of a cline of populations?
********************************************************
Rich,
     Question 1---Yes, I would "disrupt" stability and treat them as conspecifics, BUT I would minimize that disruption by treating them as two separate subspecies.
     Question 2---The second situation seems less likely to happen, but I would name a second subspecies to reflect this new information (the result is thus the same as for question 1, but the reason is somewhat different).
     Question 3 (clines)---In the case of a continuous cline, I would recognize one species with no subspecies, but with only five populations, I might be tempted to recognize five subspecies (naming B, C, and D as new subspecies).  However, the more intervening populations there were, the less tempted I would be to recognize subspecies.
       ----- Hope this helps,
                         Ken Kinman