[Taxacom] Metapopulation lineage species concept

[Doug Yanega]

>  > "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?

This reminds me of the recent "redefinition" by Ratnieks et al. of 
the term "eusociality" such that the practice of human grandmothers 
that help raise their grandkids qualifies Homo sapiens as a 
"eusocial" species. In other words (according to this 
interpretation), E.O. Wilson, C.D. Michener, and the others who 
originally coined and defined the term *mistakenly* excluded our own 
species - despite the plain historical fact that they *intentionally* 
excluded it. Nothing like expanding a definition until it is so broad 
that it loses all clarity, or even becomes self-contradictory.

Peace,
-- 

Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314        skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82