It looks exactly like a Great Blue Heron to me. So I checked wikipedia, the font of all knowledge, which says that it forms a "species complex" with the Great Blue and the European Grey Heron. I never heard of a species complex, so I follow the handy link to a page with a whole lot of terms I never heard of, which can be distilled down to "life doesn't actually care about human-imposed taxonomy". Pretty much, it's the same bird, but because it's in South America it's called a Cocoi Heron.
1. That's awesome research, thank you for doing it
2. "life doesn't actually care about human-imposed taxonomy" is one of my favourite truths ever. :) (I keep watching them claim new species of whales and things because they've found a teensy divergence in actual genetic background and I'm like...honestly if you can't tell it's different by looking at it I'm not really sure it is...)
There is a core problem in the evolutionary sciences because the word "species" used to be defined by observable traits and behaviours. Then, as paleontology emerged, they dropped behaviors and went based on anatomy. Then Darwin published and the modern definition of "organisms that can and do regularly breed with one another" came about.
Much more recently, DNA and complexity science have gotten into the mix, and horizontal gene transfer is now a factor as is timing. For example, you can have two sets of butterflies that look very similar, act very similar, and live in exactly the same area (such as a single hilltop). However, because one comes out their cocoons two weeks after the first has reached the end of their cycle, the two populations are genetically isolated and therefore, evolutionarily, have become two separate species.
I personally think that there is value in preventing differing genetic pools from being interfered with by humans, but the current conservation approach of "protect every subspecies" is unworkable. I am hopeful that patterns will emerge from complexity and big data analytics that will help us to identify when populations are "close enough" that we don't allocate protection efforts to them.
Right now, we're just drawing lines in the sand because we feel there should be lines and have a sort of gut feeling where they should be.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2015-12-16 02:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-16 05:41 am (UTC)None of which makes it any less awesome.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-16 07:37 am (UTC)2. "life doesn't actually care about human-imposed taxonomy" is one of my favourite truths ever. :) (I keep watching them claim new species of whales and things because they've found a teensy divergence in actual genetic background and I'm like...honestly if you can't tell it's different by looking at it I'm not really sure it is...)
no subject
Date: 2015-12-16 03:51 pm (UTC)Much more recently, DNA and complexity science have gotten into the mix, and horizontal gene transfer is now a factor as is timing. For example, you can have two sets of butterflies that look very similar, act very similar, and live in exactly the same area (such as a single hilltop). However, because one comes out their cocoons two weeks after the first has reached the end of their cycle, the two populations are genetically isolated and therefore, evolutionarily, have become two separate species.
I personally think that there is value in preventing differing genetic pools from being interfered with by humans, but the current conservation approach of "protect every subspecies" is unworkable. I am hopeful that patterns will emerge from complexity and big data analytics that will help us to identify when populations are "close enough" that we don't allocate protection efforts to them.
Right now, we're just drawing lines in the sand because we feel there should be lines and have a sort of gut feeling where they should be.