[Taxacom] Why Australians are more real than Americans: implications for taxonomy!

[Richard Pyle]

> Yes, Richard, species ARE real entities in the world! They might 
> not have existed in a world where there was an unbroken 
> continuum between diverse morphologies, but in our world there 
> are "gaps" which break the biotic realm up into species.

Please... for the sake of us all... don't get me started. :-)

So... if I understand you correctly... you're under the
delusi...err....impression that "real" species boundaries exist in nature
outside of human imagination and convenience -- correct?

If so, we are operating under fundamentally different presumptions about the
nature of biodiversity, so we will never arrive at a mutual understanding of
what is meant by a "taxon concept circumscription"*.

No sense cluttering the list again with this debate -- there are enough
iterations of it in the Taxacom archives.

Aloha,
Rich

*Note: My use of the elaborated term "taxon concept circumscription" is to
disguish it from "species concept" (in the sense of "biological species
concept", "phylogenetic species concept", etc.) -- which is an equally
contentious and very-much related debate, but still quite different from the
"species are real" debate.