THE BUTTERFLIES FAD

Chris J. Durden drdn at mail.utexas.edu
Wed Jun 13 23:38:21 EDT 2001


No Woody, the butterfly experts started out as splitters because everyone 
wanted to name a new species. The theorists made them clean up their act 
and lumping was in vogue for a while. Then a few butterfly experts 
marvelled at how many biologies hid under but a few species. They started 
looking at food preference, physiology, chromatography, chromosomes, 
electrophoretics and DNA. They actually tried hybridizing members of the 
"same species". The result was the current wave of long overdue splits of 
species in order to recognize truly biological species.
.............Chris Durden

At 02:23 PM 6/13/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>Gosh, sounds as though the butterfly people started out as lumpers but, as
>they learned more, became splitters! (OK, I am going to run away now...)
>
>Woody



 
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