lep names

[Anne Kilmer]

You're cute when you're mad. 

What I think is, the book publishers need to also sell a subscription
for updates. Then, every Christmas (for maximum chaotic effect) you get
a bunch of peel-and-stick corrections to stick under your picture of
Whozit joanae, indicating its this-year scientific and vernacular names,
you stick them in your books on the requisite pages, and everything is
copacetic. 
Web page owners and organizers must swear an oath to update their pages
in December, too, so that every single bug will bear this-year's correct
name. 
Indexes will be cross-referenced, post referenced, and longer than God's
name. 
Thus there will be plenty of employment for taxonomists, whether lumpers
or splitters, and you can all continue yo-yoing the names about to your
heart's content. 

Just kidding, John. My husband is a card-carrying member of the Flat
Earth Society (or at least he has a card that says so, is that the same
thing?) Me, I'm an avid fan of Terry Pratchett's Disk World series,
which might cheer you up if you want a rest from your own battle with
the forces of chaos. 
As Will Rogers pointed out, chaos is a name we give to a form of order
we don't understand. (I paraphrase. The worthy Kenelm will correct me, I
trust.)  

I sympathize. I am, with my other hand, emptying the old laptop, Drake,
into the new and enormous laptop, Banquo, and many many files may be
duplicates, or they may not. A task much like taxonomy. And of course,
as an amateur genealogist, I see that the interposition of DNA studies
makes all one's suppositions dubious. 
(Luckily, we genealogists don't have to care, unless we want to. ;-)  )
Cheers
Anne Kilmer
South Florida

John Shuey wrote:
> 
> > Lep folks,
> >
> > FYI, at its annual meeting last summer, the Lep Soc passed a motion:
> > "that a committee be formed to draft a position statement on the
> > rules and guidelines by which taxonomic decisions are made and to
> > examine the possibility of developing a list of scientific names for
> > North American butterflies."
> >
> 
> The basic problem with this idea is the lack of a clear consensus of what defines
> a species.  I think this is indeed a basic problem that will not be resolved such
> that everyone will be happy.  So what definition do we use?  Biological species
> concepts? Phylogentic? Phenetic? Evolutionary lineage? A confused compromise?
> All these approaches have merits and disadvantages.  The official list will have
> to be based on some imperfect approach to this problem.
> 
> Choosing a solution and force feeding it to the world inhibits the creative
> process.  A good example would be the many new subspecies described in Ron
> Gatrelle's Taxonomic Review.  The Opler led "Committee", which has strong
> conservative leanings tried to bury the bulk of the names.  Lost in all this is
> the thought provoking nature of these taxa.  Species and subspecies are after
> all, only human generated concepts which try to explain the natural world.  Do
> these concepts represent true lineages? Do they shed light on evolutionary and
> biogeographic patterns?  Will we ever know?  If the Committee has its way, these
> names would be quickly buried for all time, and no one would ever dare dig them
> up or investigate them in the field.  The Committee does a disservice to curious
> minds - many of us actually have thought processes of our own.
> 
> Look at what might have (and in fact briefly did) happen with Papilio joanae.
> Despite the fact that Hietzman actually presented a very convincing case
> supporting a biological species concept in the original description, "better
> scientific minds" knew better, and immediately sunk it.  If it weren't such a
> distinctive species (it really isn't that similar looking to P polyxenes if you
> have a feel for machaon phenotypes) it may still be lost today.  But despite the
> proclamations of "better minds" they simply could not make this inconvenient
> butterfly go away.
> 
> So now we want to institutionalize a Committee of better minds, such that we can
> KNOW the species.
> 
> Well when I grew up, biology was an interesting subject, full of mystery and
> intrigue.  Evolution was a fluid, continuous process.
> 
> Boy, I guess I was wrong.  The Committee will define for us a static species list
> - based on such rigorous criteria as "this is the consensus of the committee"
> (also known as the "we said so and we know best species concept").  All evolution
> obviously happened in the past, so that  the committee can clearly see the end
> result and can  truly KNOW the Species. (And of course don't forget that this is
> what it is all about - providing a static list of The Species so people can track
> their life lists - bio-complexity should not be allowed to interfere with THE
> LIFE LIST).
> 
> But you know, despite all the "better minds" out there, we figured out that the
> Earth ain't flat, nor the center of the universe.  And to be honest, I thought
> that Darwin established the concept of evolution as an ongoing process as well.
> (this Darwin thing might be too recent to have infiltrated too deeply into the
> Lepidoptera community though).
> 
> So, should species be easily identifiable?  Maybe - and maybe not.  Do we want to
> impose a sanctioned "concept of species" for butterflies.  Definitely not.  I
> like a good mystery - especially the mystery of life.
> 
> I apologize for both my cynicism and sarcasm,
> John Shuey
> 
> 
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