[obol] species concepts

[Cindy Ashy]

Mayr himself struggled with the "Biological Species Concept" throughout the
"changing intellectual milieu" (his words) but I think the struggle, even when
restricted to a semantic debate, makes us understand the process better. You'll
also find that his and others' questions of "why" naturally lead to the answers
of "how?"

In my opinion, the most brilliant scientists in history, including Mayr, tend
to first ask why, not how.

Mayr wrote "The Growth of Biological Thought" late in his life (in his 80's -
he lived to be 100!). It is a history book by a brilliant man who lived through
much of the history himself...while it is full of facts, the thing that makes
it special is it is also full of wisdom and insight. I highly recommend it for
anyone interested in the topic of speciation. In fact, it's probably time for
me to dust it off and read it again.

I agree with Whit that it is interesting to see how differently speciation is
viewed amoung people studying different groups of organisms...and I'd like to
just throw out that although people studying birds and herps might see things
somewhat differently, in the grand scheme of things, maybe they're quite
similar...think about how differently an invertebrate zoologist studying spp
that spawn might view speciation...when the isolating mechanisms are confined
to the sperm/egg interaction and maybe the timing of the release or gamete
morphology....or as one professor reminded me several times, to think about the
bizarre world of the protists and the paucity of sexual recombination and the
dominance of asexual reproduction.

The life on this planet is so diverse, one theory/one mechanism/one methodology
isn't going to explain/cover it all....not ever, no matter how new and improved
an idea is.

Cindy Ashy

Original quote:

"Across the taxonomic spectrum, Ernst Mayer's Biological Species 
Concept is little used and may be on it's way out.   Most botanists and 
invertebrate zoologists (which includes most systematists in general) have 
generally not used the Biological Species Concept.  Mayer was an 
ornithologist and it has primarily been ornithologists and other vertebrate 
biologists who have followed him.  In the last 20 years or so most 
Ichthyologists and Herpetologists have switched to the Evolutionary Species 
Concept of Wiley so today the BSC is mainly used by ornithologists and 
mammalogists.  That represents only about 15,000 extant species (using the 
BSC) out of nearly 2 million described species in the world.  It represents 
less than 25% of vertebrates.  Plus, a growing number of ornithologists are 
using one of the Phylogenetic species concepts.

Whit Bronaugh
Eugene"


 
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