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SUMMARY:SPECIES IDENTITY: WHEN IT MATTERS - Peter Crane\, University of Ch
 icago
DTSTART:20070309T173000Z
DTEND:20070309T183000Z
UID:TALK6196@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Janet Gibson
DESCRIPTION:In 2007 we celebrate the 300th anniversary of the birth of Lin
 naeus\, the eighteenth century Swedish physician best known for developing
  a pragmatic approach to naming the basic units of biological diversity. L
 innaeus leaned heavily on the work of earlier scientists\, but he was rele
 ntless in applying his new binomial approach across the whole of biology\,
  and to material brought back from all over the world. This great work of 
 synthesis\, and its near comprehensive systematisation of the diversity of
  life as it was known at the time\, established Linnaeus as one of the gre
 at scientists of his day. It also set new standards and was of great pract
 ical value. It became an essential tool in organising the explosion of kno
 wledge that resulted from rapid exploration of the natural world through t
 he late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this sense\, Linnaeus made
  possible the insights of Darwin and Wallace. Linnaeus' approach to recogn
 izing and circumscribing the basic units of diversity\, which he then name
 d\, was comparative. It was also based on examination of reference specime
 ns. But it was nevertheless largely intuitive and resulted in a concept of
  species identity that was fixed. It is remarkable that despite current kn
 owledge of how species develop through the processes of evolution\, despit
 e ever deeper insights gleaned from genetics\, and despite advances in the
  theory of systematics\, the approach employed by Linnaeus and other natur
 alists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries persists and remains cen
 tral to much of our modern understanding of biological diversity. In part 
 this is because their work has stood the test of time: we now know that ma
 ny of the species that they recognized do have a meaningful biological ide
 ntity. But the seemingly sparse application of more sophisticated techniqu
 es to circumscribing species in Nature also undoubtedly reflects the daunt
 ing practicalities: outside the most conspicuous groups of animals the var
 iety of life is vast\, poorly sampled and very imperfectly understood. For
  the specialist the unevenness in our current concepts of species identity
  represents a challenge\, and fertile ground for developing deeper underst
 anding. But in other areas such unevenness is inconvenient. For example\, 
 we depend on reliable notions of species identity to help set policy for t
 he conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Instability can 
 be uncomfortable and can have political and economic ramifications. Legisl
 ation designed to regulate the conservation and use of species\, for examp
 le the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species\, or simila
 r efforts at the national level\, all rest on the presumption that the rel
 evant species can be reliably and unambiguously identified. Beyond these p
 ractical issues the fundamental nature of species remains controversial. M
 any of these lively arguments revolve around matters relating to different
  notions of species identity\, including how species recognize each other\
 , and how they are recognized by us. Another controversy is over the rules
  by which species are named: an area of debate confounded by an unfortunat
 e weakness inherent in Linnaean binomial nomenclature. Uniform application
  of the binomial approach requires uniform concepts of both genus and spec
 ies identity. The binomial system\, rather unfortunately\, intertwines the
  delivery of straightforward species labels\, with the much trickier issue
  of how similarities and differences translate into hypotheses of evolutio
 nary relatedness at the generic level. The focus of this lecture will be o
 n concepts of species identity in plants. The examples will illustrate the
  heterogeneous state of current knowledge. Many economically important or 
 biologically interesting plants have been well studied and provide insight
 s into the identity of some plant species in genetic and evolutionary term
 s. But at the other end of the spectrum many plant species (perhaps the ma
 jority) are not well understood. Their identity rests on a preliminary int
 erpretation of similarities and differences in plant form\, that remain to
  be understood in terms of the biological processes that created them. 
LOCATION:LMH\, Lady Mitchell Hall
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