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The Practical Relevance of Species Concepts and the Species Problem

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Species Concepts in Biology

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Abstract

So far we have mainly dealt with the species problem from an academic perspective—how species notions have evolved historically, what ontological or metaphysical status species have, what species concepts there are and how they differ and why, etc. It was only in the last chapter on species delimitation that taxonomic practice was given more attention, although the focus was on general issues and again theoretical arguments. The main conclusion was that species delimitation will necessarily contain an element of arbitrariness because of the continuousness of the phenomena and processes underlying the origin, distribution and evolution of biodiversity. As a result, the discrete, binary nature of taxonomy (taxon or no taxon) cannot adequately and completely objectively capture and classify diversity at and around the level that we usually think of as species—i.e. the level at and around the tokogeny/phylogeny divide (in sexual organisms) of closely related populations that may or may not be fully interfertile, may or may not merge again or may or may not exchange genetic material shows close phenotypic affinities and sometimes hybrid zones of varying geographical extension and degrees of permeability, etc. Nevertheless, species are commonly viewed as the main currency in many areas of biological research, both applied and theoretical. What impact does the insight that species boundaries cannot be drawn completely objectively have on these disciplines? This will be briefly summarized in the present chapter. The aim is not to provide detailed analyses of how species uncertainty bears on concrete research questions but to give an overview of what is at stake and to sensitize readers to this important issue.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The name literally means “Ness monster with diamond(-shaped) wing” and is an allusion to its alleged similarity with something like a plesiosaur. Incidentally, it is also an anagram of “monster hoax by Sir Peter S”.

  2. 2.

    That this issue is indeed of practical relevance can be seen, for example, by how seriously the issue of species splitting is taken by the United Nations Environment Programme’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC 2012). In this document, the recent species splittings in many groups are highlighted, among them primates and bovids.

  3. 3.

    Genetic rescue is the introduction of unrelated individuals into a small and isolated population that is genetically depleted and may show signs of inbreeding depression—with the aim of supporting the local gene pool and decreasing the level of inbreeding. The textbook example is the mountain lion population in Florida (“Florida panther ”). It is usually classified as a distinct subspecies ( Puma concolor coryi) and was on the brink of extinction with serious signs of inbreeding depression (low sperm quality, genital malformations and other symptoms). Finally, in 1995, eight female Texan pumas (P. c. stanleyana) were introduced and the population has recovered well (Johnson et al. 2010). However, there was also opposition to the genetic rescue because it would dilute the original Florida panther gene pool. This opposition (and legal hurdles) would have been even stronger if the Florida panther had been classified as a distinct species, and this may well have resulted in its extinction .

  4. 4.

    Cracraft (1997, p. 325) , incidentally, says: “Phylogenetic species, as basal diagnosable units, are effective functional equivalents of ESUs”.

  5. 5.

    Based on the assumption that the numbers of mature individuals in “Vulnerable” species are evenly distributed throughout the range of possible values for this category (250–1000).

  6. 6.

    In this case it is not an issue of where to draw the line in a continuum, but of an objectively wrong classification because two unrelated lineages were lumped into a polyphyletic species.

  7. 7.

    There are other approaches that result in different areas or regions, of course, but this is irrelevant for our context.

  8. 8.

    A different problem is that even if species taxa across all groups were objective and directly comparable, one group’s diversity in an area may not be representative of that of other groups. While key to the successful protection of overall biodiversity, this issue is not relevant to our present topic as it regards intergroup differences in diversity distribution but not the delimitation of species.

  9. 9.

    Divergent and phylogenetically isolated in this case means that the summed branch length to a species’ sister taxon is very high. Branch lengths can of course be measured differently, but ultimately they are a function of time to common ancestors.

  10. 10.

    Fortunately, the above-mentioned biodiversity hotspots do not only harbour extraordinarily high numbers of species but seem to also harbour high levels of evolutionary history or phylogenetic diversity (Sechrest et al. 2002).

  11. 11.

    I am not considering the fact that many could also be split further within Eurasia and North America, respectively, which adds to the taxonomic uncertainty.

  12. 12.

    Just a few comments here. The three-toed woodpecker is an example where recently splitting has been suggested such that only the Eurasian populations go by the name of Picoides tridactylus, while the American three-toed woodpecker is called P. dorsalis (Zink et al. 2002). Grey and great blue herons are usually considered two species ( Ardea cinerea and A. herodias), while wolves ( Canis lupus) and brown bears ( Ursus arctos ) are considered conspecific. Red deer and wapiti used to be classified as the same species, but recently splitting into two species ( Cervus elaphus and C. canadensis) has been more common. The important point here is not so much what the common taxonomic view is at any one time, but rather that for the majority of these taxa pairs both splitting and lumping could be argued for, depending on the criteria that one considers most relevant.

  13. 13.

    In a study of European red deer, we have done exactly this (Zachos et al. 2016), and the bottlenecked and threatened populations/subspecies of red deer on Sardinia and in Mesola were found to exhibit by far the lowest values, often one or even two orders of magnitude lower than those for other populations. Still, the absolute numbers may not be very reliable.

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  1. Mammal Collection, Natural History Museum Vienna, Vienna, Wien, Austria

    Frank E. Zachos

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Zachos, F.E. (2016). The Practical Relevance of Species Concepts and the Species Problem. In: Species Concepts in Biology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44966-1_7

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