Subspecies

[Michael Gochfeld]

I should know better than to enter a fray about subspecies. Even in the 
naive days when we all believed that the biological species concept was 
a "given" and above reproach, arguments about subspecies were a 
free-for-all. 

First (at the risk of sounding like an avian jingoist), I think that the 
subspecies concept grew mainly in ornithology.  I suggest that 
butterflies are not merely fragile and pretty birds. Much of the 
variability in butterflies simply doesn't occur in birds (for example 
seasonal polyphenism).  Then too, butterflies variants and aberrants 
received distinct names on a regular basis.  In ornithology this 
happened only rarely and as a "mistake".  

Many subspecies names were applied to different regional populations 
which were later recognized to represent clinal variation (in which case 
the names were dropped). 

In plants, for examples, in addition to geographic "subspecies", there 
are varieties, ecotypes (same genotype grown under different 
conditions), which are morphologically distinct but would not qualify as 
subspecies in terms of trinomials.  (This doesn't even include polyploid 
varieties which I don't think have an equivalent in birds or 
butterflies??).

In some cases subspecific epithets were applied when two creatures 
formerly considered separate species were lumped (and conversely now 
that there is a splitting culture, subspecies often get elevated to 
species status).  In birds there is a long culture of NOT relying on 
laboratory hybridization studies as representative of what happens in 
nature (for those who believe that reproductive isolation is the 
hallmark of distinct species).  

I think there is a reason to question whether the geographically 
distinct subspecies concept is applicable to butterflies, particularly 
where two recognizably distinct forms also have different ecological or 
host preferences or requirements.  

Finally, the caterpillar may be the unit of most intense selection, and 
has no counterpart in the bird world.   

In birds, it is not at all unusual (in fact it is typical) to have quite 
different phyllogenies at the species and even generic level, depending 
on the character suites one studies.  This also applies to phyllogenies 
based on larvae vs adults. I can't imagine what would happen if one 
tried to form trees at the population or subspecies level. 

Mike Gochfeld