Strathmorezoo
Well-Known Member
As we are all conservationists, I thought that it would interesting to see what side of the coin are you?
Lumper or splitter?
- Thread starter Strathmorezoo
- Start date
It's very much a case-by-case basis for me, as I suspect will be the case for most people here; for instance, I definitely reject the lumping of all mainland tigers into a single subspecies, as has been suggested in recent years, but equally I reject a lot of the excessive bovid splits which were proposed by Groves and Grubb.
However, I generally think that in an ideal world it is better to approach conservation from a splitter point of view than it is to do so from a lumper point of view; all things considered it is better to protect 5 populations of an animal - three critically endangered and two least concern - believing each to be distinct species, and end up with a greater genetic diversity overall if you are proven incorrect in your beliefs, than it is to look at an animal and believe it to be a single least-concern species, only realising that the situation is otherwise when it is too late to save the three populations/species which were on the brink.
Now that molecular phylogenies and phylogeography can untangle the evolutionary history of just about any living organisms, it seems like the duality of "lumping" and "splitting" should be resolvable by doing thorough scientific analysis of natural history using a molecular framework.
It takes time to sort that out though - and sometimes backtracks on itself the more it's studied. Apparently with further studies there's significantly less genetic disparity than thought among the Galapagos Giant Tortoise complex - and a relump down to 2 or 3 species is potentially in the cards. I've taken to being slow to update my lifelist on splits unless there's particularly good evidence they're valid will stand, having had a few species lumped into another species now.
However, I do agree with Dave that initating protection efforts early is a particular benefit to leaning on the split side of things - an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
I've asked this to different people a few times, and have never gotten a good answer to it, but how do phylogenists determine what the threshold of what is or isn't a "species" is? Surely, you can understand that there are cases two genetically distinct populations may not reach the amount needed to be considered two different species, but instead either subspecies, ESUs, or simply different populations of the same species. It's a fine line between whether two distinct populations are or are not different species, so it's no surprise there is subjectivity over where the line is drawn.
I also think that, while genetics is a big part of the picture, utilizing genetics as the only criteria for determining what we consider species isn't ideal from a conservation perspective. There are cases that populations may be important from a conservation perspective, even if they are not genetically distinct enough to be species (e.g., if by cultural transmission or social learning there is a population fulfilling a unique niche in the food web it doesn't fulfill elsewhere in their native range), and vice versa there might be cases where populations are technically different species, but could easily be interchangeable from a conservation perspective (e.g., the concept of "functional diversity").