Splitting gone awry
Monday, December 24th, 2007BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Not one but ’six giraffe species’
Apparently, molecular evidence suggests that Giraffes are really 6 different species, not 1. Even though their ranges cross, there seems to be no interbreeding. That would seem to mean sexual selection though the guy said they do interbreed in zoos…
So, I’m no biologist (yet!) but it seems to be if you allow merely being on the path to speciation some time in the distant future to constitute a different species, the term species will cease to be of any use. Isn’t this what the term “subspecies” is meant for? It seems a recent trend in zoology is for people to be overly happy with the splitting since molecular phylogeny techniques have gotten so much more precise.
Environmentalists also tend to favor splitting as it can turn what was once one species with only threatened status to several endangered species. Of course, going too far can undermine popular support. If the giraffe was endangered (it’s not currently), I’m sure public support for conservation would be comprehensive. But a more nuanced presentation like “lower Kenyan giraffe needs our help!” seems to only get more blank stares..
Here’s what I want to find out - when they determined that these different types of giraffes are different species, does the data show that they’re as different as different species we take for granted to be different? I know it would be hard to condense all the math down to a scale, but for the public’s consumption, something like “more different than a dog and a dingo, but less than between a dog and a wolf” would help us all grasp the concept. This is reminiscent of how we accept Pluto as a planet, though countless objects at least its size also exist. So what’s odder to have hundreds of planets or for pluto to just be a baby planet? What’s odder, for many species we think of as 1 to really be related species or for a single species to have subspecies differing significantly in appearance and having split apart more than a few million years ago?