Re: Object lesson in email bloat (Modified by John Wilkins)

From: Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Wed 27 Apr 2005 - 13:01:54 GMT

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    Okay now I look multiply daft :)

    > Tsk, a biologist should be able to identify an ape :-)

    Uh-huh. Monkey sounded funnier though? (how weak is that defence...)

    > I am familiar with Otte and Endler, and most of the later stuff (not
    > speciation, although I'm remedying that now - I tend to be a pluralist,
    > allowing for sympatric as well as allopatric speciation). I also know
    > White's karyotypic (stasipatric) account.

    Stasipatric -- that was it... And certainly sympatric works just fine; but it is at the end of the day just one form of a general mode of which allopatric is another. Whether the division is due to a mountain range or results from host fidelity affecting mating, or allochrony or variation in call or whatever, the restricted gene flow is a must. None of our modelling could produce speciation with high gene flow, and certainly not with panmixis; all we could get was a population that bled F2 breakdown hybrids (which is just incipient speciation essentially); sadly I had little time to follow through on the development of assortative mating in response to an environment that pulls a population in two directions at once, but it works as we and others found (and as is fairly plain to see in reality anyway).

    > I have a history - a memetic study you might say - of species concepts
    > from Aristotle, through the late classical, medieval, renaissance, and
    > later periods as well as the beginnings of natural history from
    > Cesalpino on. It's being revised for publication now. I hope to have it
    > ready by October or so.

    I'd love to read that -- will you post a notice to the group?

    > I am not familiar with an "inclusive species concept" unless you mean
    > Templeton's *cohesion* concept.

    Prolly was that; I most likely promoted a word from the definition to the title in my rather patchy recollection (a quick googling seems to support that conclusion).

    A decade would seem sufficient to render most of the content of my head worthless. Ah well, thank god I'm just a general BSer these days...

    Cheers, Chris.

    > On 27/04/2005, at 7:55 PM, Chris Taylor wrote:
    >
    >> Hiya. The marvellous not-so-little book in which that concept, plus
    >> the classical biological concept and a couple of others are descibed
    >> (in a piece by Alan Templeton) is:
    >>
    >> Otte, D. and J.A. Endler (editors). 1989. Speciation and its
    >> Consequences. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, Mass. 670pp
    >>
    >> Well worth a browse -- as I recall more or less all the pieces were
    >> interesting, including some good stuff on Aussie crickets (but
    >> intriguingly, not Aussie cricketers) that extended the notion of
    >> parapatric speciation. I'm struggling now though -- its a long time
    >> since I had a copy to hand.
    >>
    >> Fyi my interest started with an undergraduate dissertation on
    >> speciation and ended up being a Ph.D. I can forward either if you like
    >> (for the various references rather than the, er, quality of the
    >> writing, especially in the undergrad dissertation...). But I was more
    >> focused on speciation mechanisms than species concepts (although
    >> obviously one has to pick a concept to study the mechanisms). Btw nice
    >> monkey ;)
    >>
    >> Cheers, Chris.
    >>
    >>
    >> Chris Taylor wrote:
    >>
    >>>> ...
    >>>> There is also a community of people that are trying to keep Latin up
    >>>> to date! This is a weird thing that may have no direct analogue in
    >>>> animal biology as funny animal hybrids can't walk / eat / think as a
    >>>> rule; but perhaps plants can throw us a bone here so to speak? The
    >>>> notion of a defined species in plants is much less useful as there
    >>>> tend to be gradations between apparent 'species' that bridge gaps
    >>>> either through interleaving (ho ho ho) of bits of genomes keeping n
    >>>> = 2 or whatever, or just adding genomes (hexaploid bread wheat,
    >>>> maize etc.); hence the biological species definition is less useful
    >>>> and we have to look at the inclusive species concept or something
    >>>> like that. And importantly the hybrids can represent a species in
    >>>> themselves. Something you kind of see in animal ring species but
    >>>> only in a limited way, and certainly you don't see summation of
    >>>> genomes in animals if there is even a sniff of recombination
    >>>> (phasmids do it, but not much else? Scott help me out here as you
    >>>> may be the most widely-read guy in the world...).
    >>>
    >>> Chris
    >>> Can you give me some reference to this "inclusive species concept"?
    >>> Species concepts is my thesis topic, presently being revised for
    >>> publication, and I have never come across it. Your help would be
    >>> appreciated.
    >>> John
    >>
    >>
    >> --
    >> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    >> Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
    >> HUPO PSI: GPS -- psidev.sf.net
    >> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    >>
    >>
    >> ===============================================================
    >> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
    >> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
    >> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
    >> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
    >>
    >>

    -- 
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
      Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
      HUPO PSI: GPS -- psidev.sf.net
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    ===============================================================
    This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
    Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
    For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
    see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
    


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