[Taxacom] double-peaked mountains (was: Wilkins on species, again)

[Bob Mesibov]

I hadn't intended to post again on this, after poor Wilkins got ignored, *again*, and his non-readers jumped straight into the confusion he was earnestly trying to sort out, namely the conflating of species reality, species concepts and species-as-hypotheses, but...

I would guess Rich's observations on reef fishes are just as apparent in most genetic analyses of individual species. At an upcoming conference, Australian specialist Craig Moritz has a keynote talk called 'Genomic perspectives on species discovery: the problem of fractal diversity', and in his abstract writes:

'In some cases, evidence from smaller-scale multilocus analyses suggest an almost fractal structure of lineage diversity within currently recognized species. This raises anew the old question of where to stop in splitting taxa. While we have a deluge of data and increasingly sophisticated methods of inferring “evolutionary independence”, we have not entirely escaped the question of “how much is enough”.'
-- 
Dr Robert Mesibov
Honorary Research Associate
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, and
School of Agricultural Science, University of Tasmania
Home contact:
PO Box 101, Penguin, Tasmania, Australia 7316
(03) 64371195; 61 3 64371195