Where Do New Primate Species Come From?
A Quick Refresher of Species Concepts:
1. Biological Species Concept (Mayr)
- A species = “A group of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations which are reproductively isolated from other such groups”
(Source)
Advantages:
– Objective, testable criteria
Disadvantages:
– Applies to only sexually-reproducing species
– Hard to test for populations that don’t overlap (i.e. islands)
– Messy when species hybridize in nature but still remain separate
– Impossible to test for fossil species
2. Phylogenetic Species Concept (Cracraft)
- A species is the “smallest diagnosable cluster of individual organisms within which there is a parental pattern of ancestry and descent”
- i.e. If you are a separate branch you are a separate species – the need for subspecies is reduced or eliminated
(Source)
Advantages
– Works for asexually-reproducing species, fossils
– Can be applied even when populations don’t overlap, or when they produce hybrids in nature
Disadvantages
– Too much splitting?
Where “Newly Recognized Species” Come From: 1. Outright Discovery 2. Splitting (includes promotion of subspecies to species)
- Moving closer to a “full” catalog of primates
- Matching legal definitions, which tend to focus on species – make it easier to get conservation recognition
- If you study species A – it helps to say that (1) it’s a species, and (2) that it’s endangered
Cons:
- Increasing confusion of what a species really is
- Science seen as biased or politicized
- Confusion about statistics of endangerment
- Increasing lack of comparability across taxonomic groups
Ultimately there are benefits and costs to splitting into more subspecies. Primatologists are faced with finding a balance when determining where to make each split. — Post Content – Mitchell Irwin, “Primate Behavior and Conservation” (2014), Northern Illinois University
DANTAisms 