[Taxacom] An improved definition of cladogenesis

[Curtis Clark]

On 3/14/2010 8:36 AM, Kenneth Kinman wrote:

>         The only cases which seem to eliminate this subspecies interlude
> would be a diploid mother species giving rise to a polyploid daughter
> species.  I fear that the tendency to oversplit (especially with a
> phylogenetic species concept) will result in far too many divergent
> populations being named full species just because a subspecies "might"
> occasionally become a species in the future.

There isn't a requirement to name everything.

If we catch a speciation event "in the act", we might name the variant 
as a subspecies. But there are other kinds of variation that are also 
named subspecies.

Wrt autoploidy, many botanists (I include myself) don't see it by itself 
as a mechanism of speciation: gene flow from the diploid can continue 
through nonreduced gametes and other methods, and autoploids are often 
morphologically indistinguishable from diploids.

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Curtis Clark                  http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
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