Tale of Two Continents --

[Grkovich, Alex]

I would agree with Chris' comments about the paucity of critical study in
North America. Europe does, howeeer, have a surprising development of
species among certain groups of Butterflies, notably Satyrids, Lycaenids,
etc. Also, the continent is divided and isolated east/west by the high
mountain ranges which no doubt has caused much diversity, and a number of
species wander or range into Europe from Asia, and also North Africa. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Chris J. Durden [SMTP:drdn at mail.utexas.edu]
> Sent:	Tuesday, November 06, 2001 10:23 PM
> To:	leps-l at lists.yale.edu
> Subject:	Fwd: Re: Tale of Two Continents --
> 
> 
> >Date: Tue, 06 Nov 2001 21:13:55 -0600
> >To: Norbert.Kondla at gems3.gov.bc.ca
> >From: "Chris J. Durden" <drdn at mail.utexas.edu>
> >Subject: Re: Tale of Two Continents --
> >
> >Norbert,
> >    I think you hit the nail on the head. The apparent paucity of North 
> > American butterfly diversity does seem to be due to lack of critical 
> > study. The number of butterfly taxonomists (indeed any taxonomists) per 
> > square mile is well below that of the European countries. Serious 
> > taxonomists in North America all know about difficult genera,
> intractable 
> > problems, cryptic species  and problems they would look into if only
> they 
> > had the time. Unfortunately these taxonomists are expiring before they 
> > find the time to solve these problems. Are they being replaced? I think 
> > not. Old-style (or even new-style) Museum Taxonomy has been a pariah of
> a 
> > specialty for at least the last half century. Look at the dissertations 
> > over this time span. Although there is systematics squirreled away in 
> > some of the papers it is usually overshadowed by some genetic, 
> > chromatographic, electrophoretic, or now molecular topic. It has not
> been 
> > possible for some time to get a PhD in unadulterated general
> systematics. 
> > We should not be surprised that there are very few PhDs now available to
> 
> > solve our problems in systematics. A lot of the systematics of the last 
> > half century has been done by amateurs, opportunists and junior level 
> > academics. Although a lot of it has been fine work, it has not been 
> > considered to belong in the leading edge of current research. At the low
> 
> > point of this trend, back in the sixties and seventies I remember "great
> 
> > scientists" proclaiming that there was no way we could hope to know all 
> > the species in the world, and that just a sampling from selected groups 
> > was enough. Personal computers changed all that, but we never picked up 
> > the educational thread. We never reinstated the study of descriptive 
> > systematics in our field.
> >    How can we persuade our colleagues in the universities that taxonomy 
> > and descriptive systematics is really important. How can we persuade
> them 
> > to stimulate and educate our future researchers?
> >.............Chris Durden
> >
> >At 12:19 PM 11/6/2001 -0800, you wrote:
> >>Well, parts of two continents anyway. For whatever, reason my mind
> recently
> >>turned to a quick and crude comparison of Europe as defined in Higgins
> and
> >>Riley's field guide to butterflies and then the North American countries
> of
> >>Canada and USA. This said crude comparison reveals that Can and USA is
> >>roughly at least 3 times the size of europe, has a greater latitudinal
> and
> >>longitudinal spread and seemingly more environmental diversity as a
> place
> >>for butterflies to evolve. Yet, for some reason we only seem to
> recognize
> >>about 1.5 times as many butterfly species as in europe. Geographers and
> >>mathematicians are welcome to fiddle with the crude numbers above but I
> am
> >>wondering if the species per area difference is real or if it is a
> >>reflection of our relatively more primitive knowledge of the taxonomy of
> NA
> >>butterflies and history of lumping different looking butterflies into
> the
> >>same species. Thoughts are welcomed, and so too would be any literature
> >>references in the biogeography realm or from other taxonomic groups of
> >>organisms in case other people have wondered about this.
> >>
> >>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> >>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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