Posted by:
FR
at Mon Sep 5 11:29:15 2005 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by FR ]
I could go on and on about Cladist, taxo, systematics, DNA, utility, etc, etc, what what good is that? The reality is, their are the same snakes they were last week, the week before, a decade before and for several thousands of years, since man set foot of this continent. Yep, the same snakes.
In the last hundred years or so, there have not been to many new ones, I mean really new ones. So why is there all this name changing? We already knew their names. I understand this view is simplistic, but thats the purpose of naming them. To simplify and give a common understanding.(of utility)(of use)
As we dig deeper into their biology(DNA) there will be indeed thousands of new species. You can say and it appears in DNA that every population that has not maintained a constant/any, gene flow is a different species(isolated)ITS ALL ABOUT HOW MUCH TIME THEY ARE SEPERATED. I imagine that is true, but what good is it? Having thirty species of pyro, and zonata. And many many species of milksnakes. Also, I imagine once they start to dig deeper, they will surely find that northern ariz getulus have not maintained geneflow with SoCal getulus for a very long time. Are they going to be a different species? How about a NJ getulus compared to a Southern Ala, coastal getulus. Both are L.g.g., but surely they have not exchanged genes in a very long time?
Our maybe color and pattern is a good tool, as surely if they look different, there must be reason for this. So, they are different? That does make a bit of sense.
So yea, we can go on and on naming the same snakes differently, we can do that until we are blue in the face. But what good is it. Do we understand them any differently then when we read, The Handbook of snakes, by Wright and Wright????? Heck, they gave subspecies and locality morphs, which is a far better understanding(in usable reality) then what we get now???????
Now for the sad part, the reality is we are naming the SAME snakes over and over and forth and back. But they are the same snakes, yet, there is little progress to the actual understanding that makes these snakes what they are. Their social/biological/ecologicial structures. What makes them tick? what allows them to survive in the enviornment, what keeps them the same or what makes them change????????????? Their real behaviors, etc.
All in all, you call call them Joe, or Moe, or Harry, or Larry, or James or Jamie, what matters is we call them(to dinner) What I don't understand is, why don't we know what makes them those different names?
Whats even scarier, is many here relate to a snake species by how it relates to captivity, not how it relates to its habitat. For instance, a, so and so, bloodline thayeri, compared to a, other so and so, bloodline. Then somehow relate those animals to L.m.thayeri. Which as a person who has seen lots and lots of wild L.m.thayeri, does not relate, as most of the pics I have seen here are not comparable to what you will see in nature, different animal.
All and all, I get the simple feeling the naming folks, have lost sight of their mission(mission statement) They have dug too deep to give a practical understanding of the subject, now what we see is them simply trying to confuse eachother. Just something to think about. Remember, their task, was to clarify and give practical widespread understanding of their names, thats all, no more(that is their mission) In that, they are lost. Thanks FR
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RE: Yep. - FR, Mon Sep 5 11:29:15 2005
