- 著者
- Ronald Sluys
- 出版者
- The Japanese Society of Systematic Zoology
- 雑誌
- Species Diversity (ISSN:13421670)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.25, no.2, pp.361-367, 2020-11-16 (Released:2020-11-17)
- 参考文献数
- 51
- 被引用文献数
- 3
Recent views on the goals and methods of historical biogeography have sought support in the distinctions between three phases of biogeographic study and between three aspects of biogeographical hypotheses that were made by Ian. R. Ball in 1975 and 1990. Here it is shown that these recent perspectives on Ball’s philosophy concern misinterpretations of his views that, therefore, are incorrectly used in the development of a theoretical framework for the formation and testing of biogeographic hypotheses. This re-evaluation of Ball’s views also serves as a template for a critical appraisal of several recently published standpoints on the goals and methods of biogeography. Recent panbiogeographic studies postulate wide-spread ancestors in the explanation of present-day vicariant distributions. Wide-spread, even cosmopolitan, ancestral distributions also underlay early applications of taxon-cladistic biogeography, but this notion of primitive cosmopolitanism has been abandoned and replaced by the more realistic assumption that the ancestor had a more restricted distribution. The notion of primitive cosmopolitanism, or at least greatly widespread ancestors, has resurfaced in historical biogeographic hypotheses featuring in modern panbiogeographic studies. This explanatory model is combined with the concept of polymorphic ancestors, which may give rise to parallel evolution of descendant taxa through the process of recombination of ancestral characters. Ample parallelism is well-known in phylogenetic analyses, while it is known also from cases of relatively recent urban evolution. Recent insights into developmental genetics, character identity, and homology concur with the polytopic and polytypic biogeographic model. Progress in historical biogeography is expected to be based on calibrated timetrees and on a pluralistic approach in which the boundaries of various biogeographical hypotheses are clearly demarcated, thus delimiting the domain in which potentially falsifying observations are applicable.
- 著者
- Ronald Sluys Cornelis J. Hazevoet
- 出版者
- The Japanese Society of Systematic Zoology
- 雑誌
- Species Diversity (ISSN:13421670)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.4, no.2, pp.243-256, 1999-12-25 (Released:2018-03-30)
- 参考文献数
- 65
- 被引用文献数
- 10 11
The paper outlines the current discussion on the species problem : what actually is a species and how do we recognize such an entity in nature? Six of the major species notions are briefly explained. A distinction can be made between species concepts based on the process of interbreeding and concepts that focus on common descent. Application of these different types of species concept may give incompatible results. It is discussed to what extent we can be certain that the species delimited represent objective realities in nature and are independent of the discovery procedure applied. Further, it is argued that because of the existence of various evolutionary processes, nature can be divided into several natural entities, each representing a species of some sort. The choice of a particular species concept is determined by that aspect or process in nature that forms the focus of one's research agenda. This plea for pluralism should preferably not affect taxonomic procedure ; named species taxa should be based on only one, taxic species concept.