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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fugl" data-source="post: 1654473" data-attributes="member: 816">Ah, thanks for that—now we’re on the same page.  It’s amazing how easy it is to talk at cross purposes about subjects of this kind. What’s always bothered me most about “independent trajectories” is not the problems on the “forward” end of the process—determination of species/subspecies boundaries—but those at the other end, specifically how to determine when subspeciation formally begins.  After all, same-sex siblings—at least among higher animals—are on “different trajectories” but AFAIK nobody’s proposing to recognize this taxonomically.With regard, to the “usefulness” of subspecies in general, I don’t know what to say.  In the avian world, there seems a fair amount of uneasiness about them in the sort of non-technical & quasi-technical literature that I normally read (I don’t read that much on mammals & other animals).  In the BNA species accounts, for example, subspecies are invariably (certainly usually) listed & described, but are then, in many cases, either completely ignored in subsequent discussion or at best lumped together into groups of similar taxa different enough from other such groups in the author’s opinion to be worth talking about.  Maybe something along these lines would also work for your whale monograph?  Arbitrary & dry as dust as information on subspecies often is, I suppose there can be little harm in getting it on record, & of course it can sometimes be quite interesting, raising all kinds of fascinating questions.Just my thoughts as a non-scientist, as requested.</blockquote>

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