[Taxacom] Metapopulation lineage species concept

[Richard Pyle]

> "This unified species concept has a number of consequences 
> for taxonomy, including the need to acknowledge that 
> undifferentiated and undiagnosable lineages are species, that 
> species can fuse, that species can be nested within other 
> species, that the species category is not a taxonomic rank, 
> and that new taxonomic practices and conventions are needed 
> to accommodate these conclusions."

Rather than disrupt 250 years of taxonomic practice by fundamentally
re-defining what a "species" is, why not leave the word "species" alone and
let it mean what it always has meant, and continues to mean today (i.e., a
species is what a community of taxonomists says it is); then chose a new
word ... maybe something like "metapopulation" or even "subspecies" ... to
refer to the unit of biodiversity that this sector of biologists feel they
need to define?

That way, we can (once and for all) put the "species concept" issue to rest,
and confine the debate about definitions of new terms only to that subset of
biologists who feel they need a more "objective" definition? (Incidentally,
I put the word "objective" in quotes because I think it's a bit of a
misdirection. Like cladistics, it's not necessarily more objective -- it
just moves the subjective part to a different step in the process.)

Aloha,
Rich

Richard L. Pyle, PhD
Database Coordinator for Natural Sciences
  and Associate Zoologist in Ichthyology
Department of Natural Sciences, Bishop Museum
1525 Bernice St., Honolulu, HI 96817
Ph: (808)848-4115, Fax: (808)847-8252
email: deepreef at bishopmuseum.org
http://hbs.bishopmuseum.org/staff/pylerichard.html