[Taxacom] barcode of life

[Richard Pyle]

At some level, every individual non-clone organism is diagnosable.  All of
these conundrums go away if you embrace taxa as human-defined constructs
(nested sets of organisms), and the definition of what a species (or
subspecies, or genus, or kingdom) is, is what a community of taxonomists
feels best serves the communicative needs of biologists to label as such.  

Objective? Not really. Consistent across different communities of
taxonomists?  Hardly. More practical/useful than any of the proposed
alternatives?  Two and a half centuries of history would suggest so.

Aloha,
Rich

> -----Original Message-----
> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
> [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of 
> Frederick W. Schueler
> Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2010 4:12 PM
> Cc: TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] barcode of life
> 
> Doug Yanega wrote:
> 
> > What I have yet to see, and would very much like TO see, is for a 
> > barcode proponent to explain the genetic criteria for delimiting 
> > subspecies. Or am I correct that they simply do not believe in 
> > subspecies, thereby - by default - leading to the 
> conclusion that all 
> > genetically diagnosable taxa have to be recognized as species?
> 
> * wasn't it a principle of multivariate phenetic 
> morphometrics, back in the 1970s, that, given enough 
> characters, all *populations* would be diagnosable, and that 
> was the big reason for supporting Wilson & Brown, 1954, in 
> rejecting the classical (zoological) "diagnosis" subspecies 
> as a category?
> 
> It's because, in general, every population is different from 
> all others that some criterion other than difference (whether 
> morphological or genetic), has to be used to define species.
> 
> fred.
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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