Cladistic species definitions can lead to under-representation of biodiversity from adaptive radiations.

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 1 of this Preprint.

Add a Comment

You must log in to post a comment.


Comments

There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article.

Downloads

Download Preprint

Authors

George Francis Turner

Abstract

Many species are paraphyletic, but current taxonomic practices often do not recognise this, and attempts are made to apply a monophyletic species concept. While allowing the recognition of ecomorphologically equivalent, or even phenotypically indistinguishable allopatric taxa as species, this often leads to combining distinctive local forms (such as cave-adapted populations) or even whole adaptive radiations (often in lakes) with widespread paraphyletic species to force species monophyly. It is suggested that this has negative consequences for our documentation and understanding of biodiversity

DOI

https://doi.org/10.32942/X2D61S

Subjects

Life Sciences

Keywords

species definition, adaptive radiation, paraphyletic species

Dates

Published: 2024-03-29 12:30

Last Updated: 2024-03-29 19:30

License

CC BY Attribution 4.0 International

Additional Metadata

Language:
English