Extinction vs accuracy

[Patrick Foley]

Fred,
 
The term 'extirpate' is sometimes suggested for local extinction, but not by
most ecologists. It has etymological problems as a synonym for local extinction,
as I wrote in a post yesterday. If anyone really hates the use of 'extinction'
as local extinction, you need to convince more people than me and others on the
list. You need to convince the editors of numerous journals and University
presses.
 
I have just pulled 18 books off the wall, classics in ecology, biogeography and
evolution. Looking in the indices I find
extinction    18 times
extirpation    0 times.
 
I'm convinced. How about you?
 
Patrick Foley
patfoley at csus.edu
 
 
"Heath, Fred" wrote:
 
> Dear Parick,
>         Just for my continuing education, what does the word extirpated mean
> in a biological sense? In my ignorance, I've always used extinct when a
> species was totally gone worldwide and extirpated when talking about a local
> population. Obviously, if a local or island population is a distinct
> subspecies (however that is defined) then the subspecies could be extinct,
> even though the species is still viable elsewhere.
> ---Thanks, Fred
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Patrick Foley [SMTP:patfoley at csus.edu]
> > Sent: Monday, January 15, 2001 2:14 PM
> > To:   Ron Gatrelle
> > Cc:   Leps-l
> > Subject:      Re: Extinction vs accuracy
> >
> > Chris, Ron and others,
> >
> > The reason I believe there is a scientific consensus that the term
> > extinction
> > should apply to local populations also is that the scientific literature
> > is
> > full of that usage. This is especially true of the island biogeography and
> > metapopulation literature, but also the population genetics literature.
> >
> >
>
>
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