Wilkins has replied to my post on species concepts.
The gist: there are a bunch of species concepts, many of which are pretty darn good.
My reply: that's awesome as long as they guide future research. The BSC provides a framework for studying reproductive isolation. Ecological species concepts are useful when studying adaptation to niches. But I still see nothing interesting that can be garnered from purely phylogenetic- or divergence-based species concepts.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Because I haven't riled up Wilkins in a while.
I was chatting with a friend who has published a fairly high profile article on speciation about species concepts. We came to the conclusion that species concepts are useless unless they guide future research. Okay, we were just echoing Coyne 'n Orr.…
Species: A term which everybody thinks they understand, but which nobody agrees upon, to denote the "basic units" of groups of biological organisms.
It is sometimes said, or has been said to me, that one ought not know too much about a topic if you are to define it clearly. This is because the…
tags: Speciation in Birds, Trevor Price, book review, evolution, birds
The question of what is a species and how they arise has generated numerous discussions and tremendous controversy throughout the decades. This interest is more than academic, as any bird watcher will tell you since the American…
Nature Reviews Genetics has published a review (go figure) of speciation genetics penned by Mohamed Noor and Jeff Feder. Here is the purpose of the review, from the horses' mouths:
Here, we review how recent advances in molecular and genomic techniques are helping to achieve a greater understanding…
RPM says,
This doesn't sound very scientific. Do you realize what you're implying?
You seem to be saying that you don't care what the true meaning of species is. You're willing to live with a "false" notion of species as long as it drives research.
That's a very bizarre position. Let's assume for a moment that the best definition of species is the phylogenetic one, does that mean all research on species will come to an end or only the research that's been based on the false definition?
I'm saying all species concepts are artificial -- just like any other taxonomic category.
Rather than trying to find a species concept that works for every taxon, it's better to pick a concept of species that fits the particular question you're studying.
In practice, one doesn't even need to think of species or species concepts, but the terms are ubiquitous and won't go away. For instance, you can study the evolution of reproductive isolation (whatever form you fancy) without calling it speciation. The same goes for studying the evolution of niche differentiation.
But people will continue to use the term speciation, so we might as well acknowledge that what passes as species/speciation in one taxon may be different from that in another taxon. And if people will continue to study speciation, they might as well use a species concept that fits what they are calling speciation.
Defining species based on some measure of divergence may work well across multiple taxa, but what does it tell us about speciation (however you'd like to define it)? As taxonomically limited as the BSC is, it has led to lots of interesting work on reproductive isolation.
Are you going to define the BSC? or just let us guess at whatever the acronym is supposed to mean?
BSC = Biological Species Concept. It basically states that speciation has ocurred when the proto-species can no longer produce viable offspring.
Rather, when the likelihood is very much reduced.
I hold a view that phylogenetics must break down at some point, where reticulation overpowers the phylogenetic signal (and this will be different for different organisms). So in terms of speciation, the phylospecies are not helpful, as they presuppose bifurcation rather than explain it. That's not a fault of phylogenetics, but a precondition for doing it.
However, reciprocal monophyly is a useful research guide, in that it can tell us about the past structure of a species lineages to some extent.
Personally, I don't think there is such a thing as a phylospecies conception. It's all either morphological (including molecular sequence "morphology"), reproductive, or some other surrogate for "specieshood".