I came upon your post as I was searching the Internet to see who else than me might be critical of a current trend in the ornithological community to redefine bird species. Writing to the IOC, specifically on the recent merger of three species into one, namely into common redpoll, I received a curious and unclear answer. How would they define a "species"? Well, not according to reproductive ability of offspring, nor in fact against some threshold of DNA similarity. Instead, to summarize their answer, they do it loosely and subjectively rather than objectively. The criteria vary from case to case. For example, in the case of the redpoll, the merger has been based on an hypothesis about a common "super gene". What is going on?! Is some kind of politics at play? Anyways, happy to know I am not alone.
I came upon your post as I was searching the Internet to see who else than me might be critical of a current trend in the ornithological community to redefine bird species. Writing to the IOC, specifically on the recent merger of three species into one, namely into common redpoll, I received a curious and unclear answer. How would they define a "species"? Well, not according to reproductive ability of offspring, nor in fact against some threshold of DNA similarity. Instead, to summarize their answer, they do it loosely and subjectively rather than objectively. The criteria vary from case to case. For example, in the case of the redpoll, the merger has been based on an hypothesis about a common "super gene". What is going on?! Is some kind of politics at play? Anyways, happy to know I am not alone.