_joanae_, names, and protection

[Kenelm Philip]

	Two statements that recur during this discussion bother me. They
are:

> My point was and still is that "better minds" effectively buried this
> taxon for the better part of a decade

> A cry for help is a 911 call. But without a specific individual address
> (taxonomic ID) the help will never arrive.

	There is nothing odd about having a newly-described taxon not
produce an immediate flurry of papers. Nonetheless, _P. joanae_, described
in 1974, made the Miller/Brown catalogue (as a species) in 1981, and the
Hodges et al (MONA) checklist in 1983. When one wants to know the taxonomic
status of something, a catalogue or checklist is the standard reference,
rather than a field guide. As far as books go, there seems to have been a
dearth of general North American books on butterflies in the late 1970s.
_P. joanae_ managed to get into the following books: the Audubon field
guide (1983) as a ssp., Opler & Krizek (1984) as a species, Scott (1986)
who sunk the name (but added that the taxon needed further study, which
is not exactly blacklisting it), Opler's field guide (1998) as a species,
and Glassberg (1999) as a species. I would say that _joanae_ is doing OK
in the literature, rather than being buried.

	Let's see now. Troubridge and I described _Colias johanseni_ in
1990, and we had to wait until 1998 for a mention in a book (Layberry et
al) and 1999 for another mention (Opler). So has this species been suppres-
sed, blacklisted, or buried for 'the better part of a decade'? I don't
think so...

	As for the Endangered Species Act and the importance of having
names on populations, I would like to make the following points:

1. History shows that laws that can be used for conservation are normally
interpreted _literally_ according to what they _say_, not according to
the intent of the framers. The people who wrote the ESA were concerned about
'charismatic megafauna', not arthropods--but once the law was on the books
anyone could bring suit to have it enforced according to what the law
actually said. What does the ESA say?

"The term "fish or wildlife" means any member of the animal kingdom,
including any...arthropod or other invertebrate..."

"The term "species" includes any subspecies of fish or wildlife or plants
and any distinct population segment of any species or vertebrate fish or
wildlife which interbreeds when mature."

Whether you like it or not, anyone can bring suit to protect a 'distinct
population segment' without its having a name. You might have to defend
the claim of distinctness in court, but that should be easy enough to do,
since the ESA differentiates between 'subspecies' and 'population segments',
thus implying that a name is not required.

	The problem with the 'name everything' school is that their taxonomy
is driven by politics, not by science. I suspect that non-political taxo-
nomy is better, other things being equal.

	Those who have seen my previous postings on the topic of subspecies
know that I am quite happy with designating a population by its geographic
location without assigning a name to it. What's the first question one
usually asks when someone shows you a new subspecies? "Where is it found?"
So why not just say so in the first place? I would find nothing objection-
able in something like _Boloria polaris_ [Sagwon]. If the range of the
ssp. is so small that Sagwon had two of them, you could use lat/long
coordinates instead. Personally, I find it frustrating see a long list
of subspecies without any indication of their localities...

	As for rankless taxonomy, I would advise people to examine a few
recent papers, like 'Species Names in Phylogenetic Nomenclature' by
Cantino et al (Syst. Bio. 48:790-807, 1999) or 'Phylogenetic Taxonomy,
a Farewell to Species, and a Revision of _Heteropodarke_ by Pleijel
(Syst. Bio. 48:755-789, 1999) to see what the future may have in store
for us. Taxonomy is at a very 'interesting' stage right now, and there are
some new currents that may carry us all (kicking and screaming, no doubt)
in some surprising directions. One of the papers read at the Arizona Lep.
Soc. meeting raised the image of future taxonomists meeting in the courtroom
to defend their views of nomenclature against the opposing side--at which
point almost anything could happen. It is indeed possible that the entire
Linnean system may crash and burn, throwing out who knows how many babies
with the bathwater...

							Ken Philip
fnkwp at uaf.edu




 
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