Sixth mass extinction, but no news on defining “species”?
| March 22, 2018 | Posted by News under extinction, speciation |
From Phoebe Weston at the Daily Mail, who offers a convenient bullet point format:
Revealed: The worrying state of Earth’s species in numbers as scientists warn the sixth mass extinction is here and wildlife is in a ‘global crisis’
Two species of vertebrate, animals with a backbone, have gone extinct each year
Currently more than a quarter of mammals are threatened with extinction
There are an estimated 8.7 million plant and animal species on our planet
About 86% of land species and 91% of sea species remain undiscovered
Starting Saturday, a comprehensive, global appraisal of the damage, and what can be done to reverse it, will be conducted in Colombia More.
The problem is, if we takes ecology seriously, how do we know?
Here are some questions one might ask:
Revealed: The worrying state of Earth’s species in numbers as scientists warn the sixth mass extinction is here and wildlife is in a ‘global crisis’ Why does this “global crisis” stuff remind me (b 1950) of the Cold War?
Two species of vertebrate, animals with a backbone, have gone extinct each year The whole business of speciation is a scandalous mess that won’t be addressed any time soon because frite lit is politically useful, especially for fundraising. Who decided that these life forms were species? What does that mean, exactly? When we say that they have “gone extinct,” how do we know that they have not simply mingled with a larger population with which they could hybridize and later separate from? I’m not trying to minimize the problem, just asking what, exactly, we are talking about?
Currently more than a quarter of mammals are threatened with extinction But again, what does “threatened” mean? At one time, beavers were threatened in Canada, now not much, apparently.
There are an estimated 8.7 million plant and animal species on our planet But how was this figure determined? By the random assignment of “lumpers” and “splitters” to the job, long before genome mapping became a tool? And if genome mapping is a tool, what are the cutoffs? How are they made? Are they applied across the board?
About 86% of land species and 91% of sea species remain undiscovered How do we know that these are correct numbers? They sound precise but what really underlies them? The situation could be much worse, or better, but who knows?
Starting Saturday, a comprehensive, global appraisal of the damage, and what can be done to reverse it, will be conducted in Colombia Well, it’s nice to see people assessing the problem but what tools are they using? Will this be real information or just more fundraising letters about situations that may or may not be the most serious ones?
See also: First mass extinction “engineered” by animals?
Lazarus species: animals listed as extinct that turned up again.
Nothing says “Darwin snob” like indifference to the mess that the entire concept of speciation is in
17 Responses to Sixth mass extinction, but no news on defining “species”?
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If they knew precisely which species haven’t been discovered, then they would cease to not be discovered.
Such figures must be a guess, but the problem is how it’s calculated. Every time a new “species is found, it has become discovered. One may speculate that the rate of of discovery can be used to calculate how many are left undiscovered, but making a purely linear calculation to estimate such figures would probably give you such large figures. The problem is that experience indicates that the discovery of new species, however they are defined, would most likely follow the law of diminishing returns and could not follow a linear calculation ad infinitum.
It’s like children hunting for Easter eggs. The first 90 are easy. The last 10 are hard. But just because you find the first 90 at such a consistent rate does not mean that 86% or 91% are still undiscovered. Some were just easier to find.
This is the big IF these days.
There are a lot of people running around yelling SCIENCE! who, after you get past the initial bluff, do not take the subject seriously.
They haven’t really got their own thoughts in order about it, they just are Pop Media Science fans.
Oh well.
Andrew
http://nonlin.org/speciation-problems/
2. Why keep “species” or why not redefine the concept if failed? Redefining would likely have been done long time ago if better criteria were available, while discarding the concept of “species” is opposed by those fond of Darwin’s “Origin of Species”. Those that believe the “reproductive isolation” story point to minor adaptations, which they call “speciation” (implying stability) and then ask us to extrapolate these small changes into the dramatic transmutations imagined yet never observed by Darwin or his followers. This is a classic trick – employed extensively by magicians, cinematographers and con artists among others – where one thing is shown and the brain then “sees” another that is not there.
What some of us would like to see is a specific set of genomics-based criteria. So we know what we are discussing when we are asked to set aside funds for conservation.
Funds for running around and shrieking about the end of life as we know it should, in my view, be raised privately.
Nonlin.org,
It has been redefined – many times. That’s why there are so many different definitions floating around to choose from. The reason that the concept isn’t discarded is because I think we all know – regardless of one’s belief as to how they originated – that something like “species” exists. I don’t think the current view of “species” would be much different (if any different) if Darwinism had never appeared.
Incidentally, I’ve been seeing suggestions lately that biologists have become increasingly “splitters” due to Darwinism.
Historically, however, biologists generally leaned much more towards being “splitters” prior to Darwinism. There’s been a move towards “lumping” for the past century. Darwin was relatively a lumper for his time. And his anti-evolutionary chief arch-nemesis, Louis Agassiz, is widely considered to have been the all-time king of the splitters.
In other words, goodusername at 5, it’s a freaking mess.
“It has been redefined – many times. That’s why there are so many different definitions floating around to choose from.”
And no one wants to take responsibility.
It would be nice if nothing depended on the utter breakdown.
Stop trying so hard.
How do you imagine this would work? You have the complete genome of, say, a Southern and a Northern white rhino. How do you decide if they’re different species?
I appreciate you won’t be able to provide a technical answer, but how to you think “species-ness” is encoded in the genome?
“I don’t think the current view of “species” would be much different (if any different) if Darwinism had never appeared.”
I beg to differ. Seeing as the hypothetical ‘transitional fossils’ of Darwinists are STILL, 150 plus years hence, few and far between, then the ‘kinds’ mentioned in Genesis still seems to be holding up quite well.
For example, despite tremendous variety everybody knows a dog when they see a dog.
Same for ‘kinds’ of fish:
Same for etc.. etc.. etc.. ,, The only thing that is decidedly missing, and the thing that is the primary source for such confusion on what a species exactly is, are the imaginary transitional fossils of Darwinists,,,
goodusername @5
It would be great if all Darwinists acknowledged the problems with “species” and “speciation” and stopped making unsupported claims. But they won’t because this would further weaken Darwin’s already crumbling sand castle.
News,
If it’s a mess, it’s because nature is messy.
I’m guessing that this is a reference to preservation.
I think you may be putting too much importance on having an agreed upon definition of species when it comes to preservation efforts. Even if biologists the world over came up with an agreed upon single definition of species, it may not actually help that much (if at all) in making preservation decisions.
What is it that we’re actually trying to preserve? I would say it’s “variety” more than just a species count. For instance: If all dogs except for a single breed were to die out, has nothing been lost since the species still exists?
Many species have sub-populations with a remarkable amount of variety, and which biologists may have categorized as separate species in the past, only to later find out that the populations often inter-breed. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the sub-populations shouldn’t be protected though, if we’re trying to preserve variety.
The reverse also happens, where it’s discovered that two or more populations turn out to not readily interbreed, even though biologists have trouble telling the populations apart. Should that influence preservation decisions?
For instance, these marmosets:
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/once-again-the-pygmy-marmoset-is-two-species/
The common working-definition of species now is when you have two populations that don’t tend to inter-breed despite the opportunity to do so. That is using genomics-based criteria.
For instance, these giraffes:
https://uncommondescent.com/speciation/dna-giraffes-are-four-separate-species/
Well, who do you think should take the blame for it not being clear whether those marmosets are one or two species?
goodusername, before trying to (ab)use “genomics-based criteria” to try to determine what a species is, don’t you think it might be wise for Darwinists to first try to prove that ‘genetic reductionism’ is true?
,,, In other words, the specific ‘Biological form’ that any particular organism may take is found to forever be beyond the grasp of reductive materialistic explanations, and as such, since Darwinism is based on reductive materialism, any Darwinian explanation of what constitutes a species will forever be based on a false premise.
Not that the science ever really mattered to Darwinists in the first place, but I would hold that the inability to explain the basic ‘biological form’ of any particular organism to be a fairly major roadblock for Darwinian explanations seeking to explain ‘transformation of forms’ i.e. speciation.
GUN,,, You are basically putting the cart way before the horse as far as the science itself is concerned.
News,
As would be expected if evolution were true.
BA77,
First, it’s Denyse that keeps demanding for genomics to be used for determining species.
Second, the quote from Meyer has nothing to do with the validity of using genomics to determine if populations inter-breed. You may as well use the quote to question the validity of paternity tests.
GUN,
I don’t care what the paternity tests say. I am not BA77’s father. 🙂
Well GUN, While genetics can be useful for paternity tests, validating genetic entropy, and such as that, it is also, in the hands of Darwinists, severely ripe for abuse.
In order to supposedly validate common descent patterns, (patterns that exist only in the imaginations of Darwinists), Darwinists cherry pick sequences that align with their presuppositions and ignore sequences that do not align with their presuppositions.
Darwinian theory is never allowed to be falsified by countervailing evidence. You may think this is all fine and well for Darwinism since it supports your atheistic druthers, but I consider it to be reprehensible science.
My point about the basic form of an Organism being irreducible to DNA is, contrary to you playing it off on Denyse, devastating to Darwinian presuppositions.
Your failure to honestly acknowledge this devastating fact is par for the course for Darwinists. It never is about the science for Darwinists, it is about defending their atheistic worldview no matter what the evidence says to the contrary.
And all for what??? God existing it is the greatest thing that could possibly happen for mankind, and yet Darwinists choose a hopeless nihilism over God. Which is, IMHO, pathetic and insane!
Allan Keith:
Seeing that Intelligent Design is NOT anti-evolution, what does that mean?
AK @ 12:
Could as easily be expected if species are stable expressions of an adaptable code.
If an alien civilization 1,000 years in the future had to figure out how many versions of Windows were released purely from the final working state of pre-installs (and somehow never figuring out they could check the version number under “about”; (maybe they “evolve” their software, having fully realized the power of Darwinian principles to build things beyond their understanding?)), how messy would that be?
The major version differences would probably land into some larger category hierarchy; but they’d be pretty clueless with all the apparently random app installs (lateral gene transfer) and user settings (epigenetic feedback). Especially if they approached it as if it hadn’t been designed.