Species concepts (and subspecies)

[Mark Walker]

Ken shared a quote from John Franclemont which I found both interesting and
convincing.  The quote appears to principally be questioning the need and/or
value of formal sub-specific naming, and while some of the supporting data
is missing from the quote I find it hard to challenge his underlying point.
I'm left, however, with the same concern and question over this issue that
I've always had  - how do we deal with (discuss, study, analyze, research,
etc.) the entities that John himself is quoted to have been interested in
without coming up with some way to reference them?  I would argue that it is
a huge mistake to simply drop some sort of naming scheme and lump multiple
entities together into a single binomial - because of the obvious resultant
loss of information.  If I have a keen interest in the study of wild
invertebrates (and I'm 11 years old), I would probably love to receive the
Audubon guide to the butterflies of North America - but would be duped into
thinking that once I've seem one of them, I've seen them all.  I've said it
before - lumping is like a projection from high dimensional space to lower
dimensional space.  In this case, we're talking of 3-D (trinomial) to 2-D
(binomial).  Just think how "flat" our beautiful world would be if that's
how we were forced to view it?  Shadows are less interesting than
shadow-makers.

Here are a few interesting U.S. butterflies that would cease to exist
without a trinomial naming scheme (each purportedly on the verge of ceasing
to exist, btw):

Epilates battoides allyni (El Segundo Blue)
Lycaeides melissa samuelis (Karner Blue)
Euphydryas editha quino (Quino Checkerspot)
Papilio aristodemus ponceanus (Schaus' Swallowtail)
Pyrgus ruralis lagunae (Laguna Mountain Skipper)

While I could easily list many more, I have chosen to include only those
less obscure - those which have recieved much attention and are largely
responsible for what little is actually being done to recognize and conserve
habitat in the U.S.  Each of these is stunningly unique, and few would argue
they should be considered non-distinct.
  
Even the well known (and extinct) Glaucopsyche lygdamus xerces (Xerces
Blue), which some consider a full species, lived much of it's 20th century
taxonomic life as a sub-species.

We must have a way to distinguish between the variation that John himself
was fascinated by, as well as continue to encourage the gathering of
additional information from the field.  How do we do it without names?  It
would seem that most of the fuss is over what set of rules are associated
with the third axis.  I would argue that there is no reason why this third
axis shouldn't be defined using a completely different set of rules (scale)
as the other two, and could therefore be used to differentiate entities
which may not be specific but only variable (forms and perhaps even
aberrations).  If the concern is over those who are looking to have statues
erected of themselves based on the discovery and/or description of newly
differentiated entities - we could simply agree that no such statues should
ever be erected.  They would be reserved only for those who are responsible
for new binomials only.

Mark Walker
trying to avoid surgery in Paso Robles, CA

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