Species Taxonomy

[Zonda]

Anyone interested in this?

http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/tax ... 12081.html

[Zonda]

Some gloomy reading.

http://www.parliament.the-stationery-of ... /16206.htm

[Padfield]

Scientific names serve two purposes: they reflect contemporary understanding of the evolutionary relationships between butterflies, and they facilitate communication about them. The situation has become so complex, with the advent of amazing biochemical methods of determining phylogenic relationships, that it does sometimes seem these two purposes come into conflict! There's almost an argument there for amateur naturalists to go back to using vernacular names for communicating!

I find the changes in taxonomy interesting, if sometimes a little annoying, but they don't make any difference to my enjoyment of this hobby. My local zephyr blues are trappi. The zephyr blues in Spain, which I've never seen, are hespericus. Currently, I think they are regarded as different species, though the older books call them the same species. From the point of view of an amateur naturalist, it really doesn't matter. I hope one day to observe and photograph the Spanish communities, which have existed in isolation from the Swiss communities for thousands of years, and when I do it will be really exciting. It won't matter at all to me whether they are called the same species or not. The reality is that they are closely related butterflies that have been separated for a long time and no longer have any interaction with each other.

Guy

[Piers]

Scientific names serve two purposes: they reflect contemporary understanding of the evolutionary relationships between butterflies, and they facilitate communication about them. The situation has become so complex, with the advent of amazing biochemical methods of determining phylogenic relationships, that it does sometimes seem these two purposes come into conflict! There's almost an argument there for amateur naturalists to go back to using vernacular names for communicating!

I find the changes in taxonomy interesting, if sometimes a little annoying, but they don't make any difference to my enjoyment of this hobby. My local zephyr blues are trappi. The zephyr blues in Spain, which I've never seen, are hespericus. Currently, I think they are regarded as different species, though the older books call them the same species. From the point of view of an amateur naturalist, it really doesn't matter. I hope one day to observe and photograph the Spanish communities, which have existed in isolation from the Swiss communities for thousands of years, and when I do it will be really exciting. It won't matter at all to me whether they are called the same species or not. The reality is that they are closely related butterflies that have been separated for a long time and no longer have any interaction with each other.

Guy

...but would they interact (ie. breed together) if the geographical boundaries were removed? If the two colonies had the propensity to breed, merge and form a common gene pool that would throw their status as separate species into question? and do they have noticeable behavioural differences or habitat preferences? don't tell me Guy that these (and other questions) won't be flooding into your mind when you meet your Spanish zephyrs...!!

I find taxonomy (and particularly the mechanics) fascinating, and while I agree that my enjoyment of a living creature is not diminished by not knowing it's name, the two aspects of zoology/natural history are poles apart; while I can enjoy watching an insect for hours I am desperate to know what it was I saw as soon as I get home. It's extremely healthy and utterly natural to see something and want to know what it is, how it works, why it behaves as it does, and how it is related to it's kindred and the rest of the animal kingdom. I would be astounded if I met someone who claimed to be fascinated by butterflies but wasn't the least bit interested in what it was they were looking at, and I would be equally astounded by anyone who professed not to be able to enjoy studying an insect in the wild without knowing what species it was!
Neither of these are amateur naturalists - quite the reverse in fact; and it's the decline of the amateur naturalist (and amateur entomologist) in this country that has led to an acute shortage of scientists (by which I mean the pure sciences, not 'Environmental Science') in these disciplines in this country.

Felix.

[Zonda]

There's almost an argument there for amateur naturalists to go back to using vernacular names for communicating!

My sentiments exactly, but these names only apply to 10% of living things.

[Padfield]

I must have expressed myself badly, Felix, because you've understood almost the direct opposite of what I meant! It happens when I try to make posts in the gaps between telling kids how to solve differential equations...

What I am saying is that the Linnaean system is inadequate to meet the reality. The proliferation of taxonomic units like superspecies, semispecies and subspecies is witness to this. To know the actual evolutionary relationship between, say, trappi and hespericus, is to know more than the present taxonomic system can express, not less. Of course, I'm not saying I know the actual relationship. But I am saying that God himself, knowing the exact lineage of every individual butterfly, would still not know whether trappi and hespericus were the same species for the very simple reason that the concept 'species' does not represent a natural taxonomic unit. There is no such thing. It is a useful concept, particularly with higher animals, but is not sufficiently well defined for it even logically to correspond to a division in nature herself. When species boundaries are changed, it is for two reasons: either because of new information concerning the phylogeny of the butterflies or because of changes in the criteria applied for defining (always artificially) the relation 'same species'. The schoolboy definition, that individuals of the same species can mate and produce viable offspring, is simply wrong. More sophisticated definitions still fail to partition the set of all individuals into equivalence classes - and this is a necessary condition for 'species' to represent a natural taxonomic unit.

Armed with the latest phylogenetic tree for the genus Plebejus, there is no further information to be gleaned from knowing the names scientists have decided to apply, which simply reflect that tree, according to convention, as accurately as the Linnaean system allows.

To quote the Maverick Kudrna:
"The definition and understanding of species has changed very much since the term was introduced by C.LINNAEUS back in 1758. The only natural units are the individual and a group of interbreeding individuals; the species is an artificial, man-invented, category. This applies also to the genus and any other taxonomic category" (Distribution Atlas of European Butterflies, 2002, p.7).

When I visit those colonies of hespericus, I will know for certain that these are different breeding communities. I will be face to face with a taxon I haven't seen before, though I will know of its historic relation to my Swiss trappi because I, like you Felix, am passionate about taxonomy! Where certain arbitrary lines are drawn by taxonomists will not affect the reality.

Guy

[Padfield]

Zonda: I'm glad you share my sentiment!!

For those 10% of species (I think that's an overestimate!) for which we do have common names, they are not necessarily less accurate than the scientific ones, especially if modified a bit. You might read in the books about Darwin's heath and Alpine heath, but I can go better than that. I can describe the Simplon heath and the Mattmark heath and all the infinite variety we get between the two 'species' in the Alps to either side of the Rhône Valley. They all came from the pearly heaths which once flew in the Valley (or should I call them the Swiss pearly heaths...?) and really haven't finished speciating!! The Swiss pearly heaths became extinct in the Valley last century, so now we're just left with this amazing variety of their evolutionary descendents on the mountains of the region. On my own mountain, in Vaud, we have just Alpine heath - or the Vaudois Alpine heath, since this network of communities has been isolated from neighbouring communities for millennia...

Guy

[Piers]

I agree, but to a point, and that point has been surpassed by the vernacular names recommended for fungi by Natural England. Why? These fungi already have names: Beautiful, descriptive, Latin ones; and yet someone has seen fit to produce a range of (in some cases) meaningless vernacular names in an attempt to dumb down fungi in the hope that by having jolly little names with as few syllables as possible, fungi shall somehow become more appealing to the general public.

Still, at least a bunch of people from Natural England got paid to deliver this project!

It's akin to having guitars and drums in church to try and attract young people to God; the inference being that the core matter itself has no appeal in it's own right. My personal view is that most members of the public don't like to be treated like fools.
Besides, vernacular names are by definition colloquial, so as soon as you start to communicate with an individual from another nation all that time spent learning that calocybe gambosa should be called St Georges Mushroom turns out to be a waste of time..!

Felix.

[Zonda]

What I am saying is that the Linnaean system is inadequate to meet the reality.

This is probably right, it is an ancient system, and flawed.

This is an as yet unnamed fossil, unearthed in the Carboniferous shale layers of the Jurassic coast recently. The wingtip to wingtip measurement is close to 67cms.

Fossil imprint (Carboniferous period).jpg (172.56 KiB) Viewed 275 times

[Zonda]

Besides, vernacular names are by definition colloquial, so as soon as you start to communicate with an individual from another nation all that time spent learning that calocybe gambosa should be called St Georges Mushroom turns out to be a waste of time..!

Very true.

[Piers]

the Carboniferous shale layers of the Jurassic coast

I love that contradiction..!

[Padfield]

I wanted a fight and we're all suddenly agreeing with each other.

In practice, since I live in a non-English-speaking country, the scientific names are much more useful to me than any vernacular names. I invariably use the narrowest available term when referring to butterflies. So I say berisalii, which is specifically the Swiss subspecies of deione and never "Provençal fritillary" (or even "la mélitée des linaires"). Single word names like this rarely cause confusion and tend to be the most stable, except when a species is split and you fall on the wrong side (so all Swiss daplidice are edusa now, and we've all fallen the wrong side of venatus/faunus).

Nice pic, Zonda.

In the future, all individuals will have bar codes stamped on their bottoms and there will be no confusion.

Guy

[Zonda]

There is also an exposed Cretaceous layer on this coast. This is the one that contains the dinosaur fossils.

[Piers]

In the future, all individuals will have bar codes stamped on their bottoms and there will be no confusion.

So you heard Peter Mandelson's 'Vision for Britain' speech too...

[Zonda]

Padfield wrote:

In the future, all individuals will have bar codes stamped on their bottoms and there will be no confusion.

Can i volunteer to be 'Stamper' when the next Miss World is identified?

[Mikhail]

Guy, apropos darwiniana, gardetta etc. Have you seen the interesting and at least partly comprehensible paper by M. Wiemers at http://www.univie.ac.at/population-ecol ... s_1998.pdf?

Misha

[Padfield]

Guy, apropos darwiniana, gardetta etc. Have you seen the interesting and at least partly comprehensible paper by M. Wiemers at http://www.univie.ac.at/population-ecol ... s_1998.pdf?

Misha

Thanks, Misha! It's sobering to think that Linnaeus lived a hundred years before Mendel, and even Mendel would have been completely mindblown by this kind of research!! What is really surprising, and a testament to the genius of Linnaeus, is that we still attempt to use his system to describe the bewildering and wonderful variety of natural forms in the world around us.

Guy

[Padfield]

By way of illustrating that rather dry research, here are four piccies, all from Switzerland, of arcania, darwiniana, darwiniana x gardetta, gardetta, in that order:


(Canton de Genève)

(Valais)

(Valais)

(Vaud)

Guy

[Zonda]

Beautiful,,, can certainly see the differences.

[Zonda]

Please note, that the giant butterfly fossil picture posted in this thread by myself is a fabricated hoax, and was fashioned by myself in photoshop from a pic of a Red Admiral taken about a month ago. This was a failed attempt to try and get Felix to phone the Natural history museum, but alas he didn't fall for it. Ah well,,,cant win em all.