cl@ (Cameron Laird) (03/20/91)
A few weeks ago, a great plains (KS?) entomologist (whose
name I've lost for the usual uninteresting reasons) and I
traded a few comments in sci.environment on speciation.
The proximate cause for this was our joint fascination
with the love Mother Earth apparently has for arthropod
species, having borne so many. There are probably tens
of millions of insect species, we agree. However, I ex-
pressed reservations about the scientific status of the
notion of "species"; my correspondent rightly noted that
E. Mayr et al. have already responded to such doubts,
and we left the conversation there.
I want to update the thread in a couple of regards:
1. I recommend
1989 Speciation and Its Consequences. Otte
and Endler, eds. Sinauer Associates, Inc.
0-87893-658-0 (pbk).
I know it's already been reviewed in the professional
literature, and I'm a couple of years out-of-date in
noting it here, but it's readable enough that I think
it worth the bandwidth to mention it. I haven't read
it in detail, but I'm confident that anyone who picks
up a copy--at your local university, say--will find
at least one rewarding section.
2. Speciation is in the news. The 8 March 1991 issue of
*Science* has a couple of articles which highlight
the political ramifications of the scientific ambi-
guity of "species". Wolves and coyotes appear to
be interbreeding in the wild. The Department of the
Interior has ruled (approximately) that the Endan-
gered Species Act protects *species*, not hybrids.
There already is a petition to drop protection of
wolves, 'cause they no longer are a "species".
A related accessible article is in the March 1991
*Smithsonian*.
My conclusion: we still have some good scientific work
to do on what we mean by "species".
--
Cameron Laird USA 713-579-4613
cl@lgc.com USA 713-996-8546