species concepts 1

[Ron Gatrelle]

Andy Warren's post is sniped and comments inserted.  I plan on two or three
posts prompted by Andy's.  His post was a very good one and offered a lot
of information.  Any number of things I may say or go into have nothing to
do with a "counterpoint" to his post.  His post just reminds me of various
things that I can editorialize on.

snip

> There is certainly no concensus among systematists as
> to what species concept should be used.

Note here that species "concept" is singular and in the snipped part is
applied relative to all species of all life forms.
snip

> Subspecies are essentially never  used in most animal
>  and plant groups. I know of no
> formal definition for a subspecies that has been
> proposed that may be applied in all cases for all or
> most organisms (please let me know if you know of
> one!).

Here again a singular shoe for multiple feet.

It seems that this discussion always beings at this impossible horizon.
There is no orientation here as everything from microbes to mammals have
been brought up and all lumped together.  This is like making one big pile
of bricks, lumber and steel (= all _kinds_ of biota) and then pointing to
_it_ as if it was a materially single entity and then making the statement
that "Construction workers have no _one_ substance or device that can be
applied to this _one_ pile to equally join the materials in the building
process."     This is meaningless.  It is impossible because different
forms of life work very differently - just like brick, wood, and steel.
This is like asking someone to jump up and sit down at exactly the same
time and then, when we see they can not do so, coming to the conclusion
that it is not possible to either jump up or sit down.

Of course there is no one construction material that functions with brick,
wood, and steel =  Of course there is no one "systematics" or "taxonomy"
which universally applies to all biota.  This is why there are different
Codes, terms, methods, etc between botanists, zoologists and
bacteriologists.  This is why we use mortar on brick -  nails on wood -
welds on steel.  Plant people have never had "subspecies". But they sure as
heck have had _and do have_ "varieties".   Bacteriologists use the word
strains not subspecies.  (Brick/mortar - beetle/subspecies.  Wood/nail -
plant/variety.  Steel/weld - bacteria/strain.  Different terms for things
that have an exact  parallel function but in very different ways.)   A
plant taxonomist could say to his colleagues.  "We should stop using the
term "variety" because zoologists never use this term."   To which another
botanist might say.  " Of course they don't, their Code does not recognize
the term "variety".  They use the term subspecies instead."  Then we have
asexual and sexual reproduction.   All kinds of totally unrelated
(nonequivalent) stuff.

What many here may not know is that the hyper-evolutionists (as I like to
call them)
want to (ultimately) introduce a "Code" and a systematics that replaces all
other codes and funnels all taxonomy through a universal systematics --
there would in effect be no more species or subspecies -- just organic
entities known by numbers: G.584.672-98077334 and D.978.743-53779876 etc.
Taxonomists might no longer use Hesperia attalus or Aster undulatus.  Just
the numbers based on phylogenetic study.  For the common people there would
just be a comparatively small batch of common names.   It looks to me like
some scientists in some influential places (government, prestigious
Universities) have been working toward this for some time.

Ron



 
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