What is a species? (1 Viewer)

[jurek]

If so, and we are not able to consistently place taxa in the right box, then it could be argued that the system has gone too far and is too granular.

Yes, this is what I believe. Both in the case of species and families.

But if species can be properly defined and may or may not be cryptic, then correct allocation is purely a human problem. The library system is right, we just struggle to use it!

The concept of discrete species is biologically untrue, that is birds called species on major bird lists contain more than 5% of hybridizing and non-monophyletic populations.

I remarked before that the library system of discrete species and subspecies is not needed for us. The concept became wrongly fixated sometime in the 1990s when ornithologists started using lists of all birds and early computer spreadsheets and databases. This seemed to be the top technology then.

Now it is perfectly possible to use not discrete categories. You have computer programs which lets you write, for example, a gull is 80x20 Herring x Caspian Gull and you scored 305.2 on your life list.

It removes the problem of hybrids and distinctive subspecies, which are not nothing but not a full species either. For a birdwatcher, one can even award higher rank to distinctive species, like Lammergeier or a Frigatebird, than to one more warbler or flycatcher. Or a higher rank for a colorful breeding plumage. All birdwatchers feel one is better than another, but the traditional bird list lets you only put seen or unseen.

 

[Jon.Bryant]

Your autocorrect's made a tiny oops

I have a tendency to make loads of typos, which I then try to edit - if is was a fibber, I would blame it on auto correct, but in reality it is just typing to fast and not thinking!

 

[Jon.Bryant]

for example, a gull is 80x20 Herring x Caspian Gull and you scored 305.2 on your life list.

This would be very complicated. Unless we went around testing every bird, it would need to be an individual judgement - so we would then be into that mode of 'that Jon Bryant cheats and always over-estimates - that hybrid gull he saw the other day was 10% max and he is claiming it as 50%!' Not that I would mind, as I am not competitive and my list is my list!

Also what would you do if you saw another gull that was a judged a 60/40 split. Add 0.2 presumably. But what if the bird was from the other end of the hybrid spectrum - you could argue you have seen 60% of Caspian Gull genes, so 0.6.

For me (quite ironically as I am trying to develop a listing and recording programme) I am not that bothered about the numbers. I am not even sure what my world list is - I only have an approximate number in my head. But I do like the thought of recording to the highest level of granularity, and don't mind if this means some fuzzyness. I would personally record in my dairy 'Herring Gull showing some anomalous characters of Caspian Gull' and forget the impact on my list. If I saw a 'Russian' Common Gull that fell short of the full range of characters, I would record it as either a 'probable' or 'possible henei', depending on how far off the mark it fell.

The concept of discrete species is biologically untrue, that is birds called species on major bird lists contain more than 5% of hybridizing and non-monophyletic populations.

This may be true, but what percentage of individuals within that 5% are problematic - say Blyth's Reed and Marsh Warbler hybridize, so these are two of the birds in the 5% you mention. But how common or rare is this hybridization in these species. If this is only 1 in 1,000, I think most birdwatchers could live with this, and statistically if you have seen two or more individuals (not from the same nest) the chances everything was a hybrid becomes vanishing small ( 2 birds = 1 in 1,000,000 or a 99.9999% chance you have seen the real thing). If we were to extrapolate this principle to all species, what percentage of all the individuals birds we see fall into the grey? There are probably more things that are wrong on my list due to my ID capabilities (particularly with South American empids), than created due to taxonomic messiness.

 

[bevbeverly]

This would be very complicated. Unless we went around testing every bird, it would need to be an individual judgement - so we would then be into that mode of 'that Jon Bryant cheats and always over-estimates - that hybrid gull he saw the other day was 10% max and he is claiming it as 50%!' Not that I would mind, as I am not competitive and my list is my list!

Also what would you do if you saw another gull that was a judged a 60/40 split. Add 0.2 presumably. But what if the bird was from the other end of the hybrid spectrum - you could argue you have seen 60% of Caspian Gull genes, so 0.6.

For me (quite ironically as I am trying to develop a listing and recording programme) I am not that bothered about the numbers. I am not even sure what my world list is - I only have an approximate number in my head. But I do like the thought of recording to the highest level of granularity, and don't mind if this means some fuzzyness. I would personally record in my dairy 'Herring Gull showing some anomalous characters of Caspian Gull' and forget the impact on my list. If I saw a 'Russian' Common Gull that fell short of the full range of characters, I would record it as either a 'probable' or 'possible henei', depending on how far off the mark it fell.

This may be true, but what percentage of individuals within that 5% are problematic - say Blyth's Reed and Marsh Warbler hybridize, so these are two of the birds in the 5% you mention. But how common or rare is this hybridization in these species. If this is only 1 in 1,000, I think most birdwatchers could live with this, and statistically if you have seen two or more individuals (not from the same nest) the chances everything was a hybrid becomes vanishing small ( 2 birds = 1 in 1,000,000 or a 99.9999% chance you have seen the real thing). https://writingbros.com/essay-examples/ helps me with my biological science exercises. The inspiring essay samples give me birds' identification and writing skills. If we were to extrapolate this principle to all species, what percentage of all the individuals birds we see fall into the grey? There are probably more things that are wrong on my list due to my ID capabilities (particularly with South American empids), than created due to taxonomic messiness.

Hi people. Yup, testing every bird is unrealistic, but obviously we can use visual cues, behavior, and habitat to make educated guesses.🤔

I mean yeah, people might have different opinions and biases, but that doesn't mean all identifications are useless. With practice, we can get pretty good at it - and I am already.

Everything is just so simple. If I saw a gull judged as 60/40 split, I'd add 0.2 to the appropriate category. And if a bird is mostly one species but shows some characteristics of another, I'd note that in my records without worrying about its impact on my list.

It's a personal thing, so let's keep an open mind and enjoy birdwatching in our own way, that's all.🤷‍♀️