Species vs. Subspecies

[Kondla, Norbert FOR:EX]

Makes good sense to me. My idea of conservative butterfly taxonomy is to
accept the rank as originally assigned by the person who described the beast
and then assign a different rank when there are some real reasons for doing
so. Regrettably we are still faced with the legacy of the last century when
many things were lumped on the basis of superficial similiarity and numerous
assumptions and questionable/inconsistent logic, especially in the use of
genitalic characters.. Just my humble opinion :-)

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris J. Durden [mailto:drdn at mail.utexas.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2001 9:35 PM
To: leps-l at lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Species vs. Subspecies


Norbert,
    If they look different call them different until there is some 
compelling evidence to refute this.
    It seems strange that people who declare that we are losing species to 
extinction every year at the various published rates, should be so hesitant 
to recognize the magnificent diversity and number of species that we 
actually have.
    I suppose their cups are half empty.
    Mine is half full!
..........Chris Durden

At 01:30 PM 8/14/2001 -0700, you wrote:
>The perennial problem. I will refrain from mentioning the specifics to
>protect the innocent and also because I am more interested in reaction to
>the logic than the specifics of the case. But the case is real. Here is the
>scenario: two taxa, allopatric by about 300 kilometres where they come
>closest; they look plainly different and they have structural differences
in
>the genitalia. Seems like the normal taxonomic practice would be to rank
>them as separate species. In fact these two taxa are treated in current
>literature as subspecies.  I am interested in any thoughts on why different
>looking butterflies with structural differences would be treated as
>subspecies when the normal practice is to go the species route.
>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>Norbert Kondla  P.Biol., RPBio.
>Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management
>845 Columbia Avenue, Castlegar, British Columbia V1N 1H3
>Phone 250-365-8610
>Mailto:Norbert.Kondla at gems3.gov.bc.ca
>http://www.env.gov.bc.ca
>
>
>
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