Just a quick grammar note here - “specie” doesn’t refer to biology at all. It refers to money, oddly enough. The word “species” is both singular and plural. (I know, English makes no sense…)
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I add subspecies for three reasons.
- Rare subspecies—island endemics, varieties of plants, etc.
- Lifers…more leaf and species taxa.
- More accurate data…more specific.
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Often people see taxonomy as a set of hard lines where in reality there are none. There are no well-defined rules defining species vs. subspecies (i.e., there is no consistent rule saying x amount of genetic difference represents a subspecies and y amount of genetic difference represents a species).
Generally, things are considered separate species if they cannot produce fertile offspring. However, there are many exceptions to this “rule” (e.g., Poecile carolinensis and P. atricapillus). Evolution is an extremely slow process. Subspecies indicate the start of a divergence, but that divergence is a gradient over time and it’s impossible to point to a single offspring in the line and say, “this is the first individual that has diverged enough to represent a new species”.
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(that is because species is Latin)
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There are some tiger beetle folks that seem to love to assign intergrades this way. Makes me a little crazy. Not to say that subspecies and intergrades aren’t potentially useful concepts, but the fine scale splitting and overly precise taxonomic assignment gets out of hand, and both clines and polymorphic species often get treated improperly in my opinion.
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Amen to that. Composite organisms. Ring species. Dozens of potentially useful species concepts. What in the hell is a phylum, really? Snapshots in time … I’m glad I’m not a taxonomist.
I think it’s also important to note that different disciplines have different norms. Vertebrate subspecies seem to me (as a plant person) to be extremely granular, whereas plant subspecies/varieties are sometimes equivalent to vertebrate species. Fungal and bacterial species, to my knowledge, are/were tremendously vast compared to more readily dissectable organisms.
Sometimes. It’s also not strictly bifurcating, and reproductive barriers do not necessarily develop if populations are allopatric, especially if reproductive morphology is less selected on than non-reproductive morphology.
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Thank you. I’ve always messed with this word.
PS: It is even worst, it is Latin)
Are you sure wild Muscovies occur in the Dominican Republic? This range map from Birds of the World suggests otherwise.
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Muscovy_Duck/overview
If that is the case, the flying Muscovies are ferals.
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And to get even more specific, different vertebrate families and orders also have different standards! Some bird species have subspecies based on appearance that coexist; others have near-identical subspecies in different geographical eras, etc.
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A sub-species is a group of organism which has been observed to have slight but distinguishable differences from a nominal type, but not enough differences to be considered a separate species.
I’m confused too whether to identify the local butterflies up to subspecies level. I see in wikipedia that some subspecies are likely geographic races. But the description of the subspecies is not readily available on the internet for many organisms.
One local website has all the local butterflies identified up to subspecies level. I use it as a reference and can derive the local subspecies names, with some assumptions that there is no other subspecies present. I’ve read of the presence of 2 subspecies here. Generally that assumption will hold. There is no typhoon that will blow some butterflies off course. Local users are mixed , sometimes going down to subspecies level. A few known experts only identify to species level.
There are a few plants which I can remember its subspecies names . For plants, it is complicated with varieties…Varieties will be more of human cultivated origins. Sub-species can be elevated to species level. If there is a group uniformly identified to subspecies level, when a change of name occurs, I guess it is easier to implement.
Subspecies are useful to add if they are distinctive or have geographic populations that are easy to differentiate. So for examples like birds, salamanders, and certain mammals. Of course the arbitrary line exists between species and many geographically isolated units should probably be just considered a “species”. Especially since they are often treated as such by watchers with their own common names.
Of course taxonomists have had long debates on the usefulness of scientific names attached to subspecies. How to deal with clinal variation is one of the hard decisions. The battle of which species concept to use
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I don’t usually note the subspecies in my own observations unless I specifically know the physiological or distribution differences of the organisms I’m seeing. I appreciate when people point out the subspecies of the organisms I observe, it’s one more leaf in my lifelist.
Subspecies (and taxonomic varieties, in plants) vary a great deal in their importance. Some are minor variations that struck somebody as important once but really don’t matter. In other cases, the subtaxa are incipient species and taxonomists may choose to recognize them as species. So, name the observation to subspecies (or variety) whenever that’s practical, given your identification methods.
Different subspecies should differ in morphology, physiology, or something but they should also differ in geography (or show a strong difference in ecology). Why? Because if there is no geographic (or ecological) separation, the variation we’re seeing is internal to the taxon. Interesting population biology, but not a taxonomic distinction. So it’s perfectly OK to use geography as a clue to name an observation to subspecies (or species). When IDing photos, grography may be the only clue to subspecies ID, and that’s OK. Use it.
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It’s English now. :-)
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I’ve read a description of English once: the result of Norman knights trying to chat up Saxon barmaids – and that’s before so many other additions…
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I wasn’t sure of their exact native range; just that in some Spanish-speaking countries, the common name is pato criollo, which approximately translates as “native-born duck.” From the map, it is true that a vagrant would have had to do quite a bit of island-hopping to reach Hispaniola.
Or, conversely, considered a “population.”
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Muscovy Duck are non-migratory, so a Muscovy just flying off outside its native range is unlikely, though I have seen people keep wild-type Muscovies in captivity.
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For plants, I just ran into an interesting case today, where you can have a native species Prunus illicifolia illicifolia (native to many parts of coastal California mainland) be mixed somewhat with a non-native species Prunus illicifolia lyonii (native to channel islands), such that without subspecies delineations you’d never know that you’re looking at a possible cultivated plant or escaped from cultivation plant vs. a native plant.
That’s a thornier question, I believe it’s mainly determined by the experts in the field, along with characteristics set to differentiate a species from another similar species. DNA evidence and thresholds of similarity/difference between species may be set to determine a cutoff for being a different species as well.
Traditionally (in the old days), species was defined by not being able to mate to produce viable or reproductively viable offspring for more than one generation. I believe this still works, but many true species can interbreed, which is why this is more of a negative rather than positive test of the species concept.
One case that helps illustrate the difficulties would be interfamily and intergeneric crosses of plants have been made, which would call the idea of families or genera into question were it not for human intervention or natural barriers to crossing.
I’m sure there’s cases where two species could merge given the right circumstances and enough gene flow.
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Yes indeed. Where two or more closely related species have been introduced to North America, they may interbreed to the point that they are no longer separate species. Dr. Mary Barkworth calls this “despeciation.” Three species of Tamarisk (genus Tamarix) are doing this in the Great Basin. One could argue that the grasses Lolium perenne and L. multiflorum never were really species, though the names go back to the 1700’s, but they’re certainly not distinct now.
The species concept – or rather, concepts (there are about a dozen) – is not simple. The organisms out there just don’t care about our need for simple, mutually exclusive words to talk about biodiversity.
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