Can anyone defend the species concept as scientifically useful? Why do we (and I suppose, more commonly...

Can anyone defend the species concept as scientifically useful? Why do we (and I suppose, more commonly, creationists) continue to refer to evolution as giving rise to "new species" rather than what it really is, which is just a change in allele frequency in a population, tending to result in groups of organisms that are different enough (and what "different enough" means varies depending on your point of view) for us to refer to them separately? Do biologists continue to refer to speciation simply because it's the norm?

language is like a virus

fuck off kojimbo

who?

Wooooords

Because it's a useful model.

What do you find to be useful about it, other than as al shorthand to refer to certain groups of organisms you feel are different?

Species by definition are organism different enough that they cant have fertile descent, is nothing abstract, read some books

>Species by definition are organism different enough that they cant have fertile descent
That's not quite true. IIRC there are groups of organisms that are considered separate species because they don't interact in the wild, even if they're genetically compatible. Also, that definition doesn't work at all for asexually reproducing species.

>What do you find to be useful about it, other than as al shorthand to refer to certain groups of organisms you feel are different?
Isn't that enough for it to be useful?

imagine two creatures very alike, they both eat chocolate and one of them dies.
If you call the one that died "dog" and the one that lived "humans", it's easier to teach the population which one can eat chocolate, so a lot of dogs don't die.

Just because a concept lacks a strict definition or clearly defined boundaries doesnt mean it isnt useful

As another user pointed out, this definition doesn't hold up in practice.

I can definitely agree that species are useful shorthands, and useful teaching tools, and have a place in every day conversation. My question was more about the use of species as a framework for biologists, not laymen or students.

It is useful to them too? By looking at somethings full name you can get a rough idea about what kind of creature it is. Anyway you got to name things one way or another, what alternative do you propose?

Species let us study patterns that affect a group of organisms with common ancestry (social phenomena and other such patterns). You wont find those phenomena if you just pick random organisms. You need to be able to pick a specific group.

You could alternatively somehow define this group you want to focus on, by measuring similarity in DNA or something, but the problem is that similarity in DNA does not guarantee the phenotype of the individuals is also similar. Theres always differences in the genotype, and you cannot know the significance of those differences. So its better to categorize based on phenotype, and secondarily on genotype (to make sure its not an alien in disguise trying to sabotage your results).

Also when you want to reference a fuzzy group of organisms, its easier to use a single word to identify a species, than to figure out what the actual space of DNA sequences that covers the group is.

Ideally you use all the approaches. Concept of species is an approximation/model, so its imperfect, and occasionally youll need to use the deeper understanding we now have available to figure out the edge cases.

The species concept is scientifically useful inasmuch as it can classify different species practically, which it can. Sure, lions and tigers can interbreed. But they're pretty different. We call them different species for the sake of convenience. There's no rigorous scientific reasoning and we don't need one because we don't use the term for rigorous scientific things.

Its a useful shorthand. That's all it is.

I suppose I don't propose we stop naming things, only that we are more careful in our language when we talk about evolution giving rise to new species.

The problem I see is you end up with creationists arguing about "transitional forms" from one species to another, as if they were two completely different organisms and not continuations of one another. Now, this is definitely a misinterpretation of the species concept, but it arises from the way that many evolutionary biologists tend to talk about evolution.

In addition, species definitions tend not to hold up. As points out, just because it's not strictly defined doesn't mean it's useless, but it certainly makes it less scientifically valuable, in my opinion.

Do we call different ecotypes of killer whales different species, because they apparently never interbreed? Do we call fin whales and blue whales one species, because they produce viable offspring in the wild (I'm a cetologist, if that wasn't super clear at this point). The concept seems a bit too murky to be very useful.

That being said, I'm not about to, like, launch a crusade against species. It's a shorthand, and I don't have a particularly viable alternative way to refer to the diversity of life on earth. I suppose I'd just like to see more care being taken in how we talk about evolution.

>Can anyone defend the species concept as scientifically useful?

>colors are all subsets of the same visible light spectrum
>let's get rid of color names

>every set of dna is a special snowflake
>we shouldn't look for similarities and differences
>we shouldn't group them using clustering methods

...

is there a zoom version of this?

>doesn't know what a strawman is
>continues to shitpost

Most scientific concepts don't reflect reality, are 'real' or 'true' because reality simply is. It doesn't need words.
Why keep a concept such as individual organism anyway? The LCA just happened to divide a lot.
Nothing in physics describes it as it really is. Only observations and math patched together until it just works out. For now.

it has many uses, therefore by definition it is useful.

meanwhile, can you defend your stance that simply because there is no exact demarcation between species that therefore the entire concept is useless?

1. Yes
2. Because it is a useful method of categorization.
3. Yes

Have you actually read "On The Origin of Species By Means Of Natural Selection" (1859) by Charles Darwin (1809-1882)?