Reefs.org Forums

[Matt_]

Pretty sure I know what it is, just curious what you guys think...

[jhemdal]

Matt,

How about a male Cirrhilabrus walindi var. photoshopsis ?

J

[joetbs]

Cirrhilabrus cenderawasih from Bird's Head Seascape

Didn't these names get auctioned off to celebreties for fundage?

[Matt_]

I was thinking C. walindi as well...

[joetbs]

I was thinking C. walindi as well...

we need a facepalm emoticon. it's not walindi. look at the link bud

http://www.conservation.or.id/office/im ... 6%20Kb.pdf

[Matt_]

I was thinking C. walindi as well...

we need a facepalm emoticon. it's not walindi. look at the link bud

http://www.conservation.or.id/office/im ... 6%20Kb.pdf

The second part of your post made me think you were joking.

[joetbs]

Nope i remember there was some hoopla about doing a fundraiser with celebraties for the species names. I don't know what ever came of it, as this Cirrhilabrus apparently wasn't part of that. There was a Paracheilinus, a Pterois, an Eppuallette, etc.

[jhemdal]

Folks,

I saw the date of the post (April 1) and then just assumed that Matt was having some fun and had Photo-shopped an image of C. walindi in order to turn it into an "unknown" species. Leave it to Joe to correct us on that! Still, that begs the question; just what is a species, what is a sub-species, and what is a just a regional variation?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/4210 ... fishap.jpg


Jay

[joetbs]

! Still, that begs the question; just what is a species, what is a sub-species, and what is a just a regional variation?

a little late for that question, don't you think

[jhemdal]

Joe,

Not really - how do you think taxonomists keep their jobs? One person describes a new species, and then somebody else comes along and refutes it.

Jay

[JimM]

Folks,

Still, that begs the question; just what is a species, what is a sub-species, and what is a just a regional variation?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/4210 ... fishap.jpg
Jay

Arbitrary human boxes existing in an arbitrary human framework…nature doesn’t operate that way, thus the constant confusion, and doing and undoing work in an effort to get the arbitrary boxes to make sense. A group must become genetically distinct to be considered a species. What constitutes a subspecies gets more ambiguous, and the rules applied are a bit inconsistent across genera

It's also highly dependent on who is doing the work. One person might rely heavily on say cranial morphology, while someone else doing some work decides the morphology is highly plastic and disregards aspects of it almost entirely...a new genus might be born based on hunting technique.


To see how arbitrary these little boxes often are that we place animals in, you can look at say the family Serranidae and the work that's been done separating the constituent fishes into various boxes based on some of the tiniest differences, sometimes coming down to a spine on the operculum. Then you can look at another group of animals entirely, like the monitior lizards, or Varanids, a group I always use when discussing this since I'm very familiar with the family and it provides an appropriate contrast. Here you have the Spiny Tailed monitor, a tiny lizard with huge spines on the tail (go figure) and the Komodo Dragon in one genus. They have vastly different dentition, scale counts, as well as other morphological differences, yet they share enough in common according to a few people that they are placed in the same genus. If the same kinds of rules were applied to this family them as say the family Serranidae, we'd have at least 3 genera, and many more species within that family. Within some families dentition is used almost exclusively to identify a different species or even genus, other times it is ignored entirely, again in a seemingly arbitrary fashion depending on the ideas of the person doing the classifying. I can pull examples at the species/sub species level, but you get the just of my rant.

Something is what it is, period. We’ll never give up on our little boxes though.