Illuminating Our World: An Essay on the Unraveling of the Species Problem, with Assistance from a Barnacle and a Goose

Abstract

Abstract:In order to plan for the future, we must understand the past. This paper investigates the manner in which both naturalists and the wider community view one of the most intriguing of all questions: what makes a species special? Consideration is given to the essentialist view-a rigid perspective and ancient, Aristotelian perspective-that all organisms are fixed in form and nature. In the middle of the 19th century, Charles Darwin changed this by showing that species are indeed mutable, even humans. Advances in genetics have reinforced the unbroken continuum between taxa, a feature long understood by palaeontologists; but irrespective of this, we have persisted in utilizing the ‗species concept'-a mechanism employed primarily to understand and to manipulate the world around us. The vehicles used to illustrate this journey in perception are the barnacle goose (a bird), and the goose barnacle (a crustacean). The journey of these two has been entwined since antiquity-in folklore, religion, diet and even science.

Unravelling the nature of Waiparaconus, a pennatulacean (Cnidaria: Octocorallia) from the Late Mesozoic–Early Cainozoic of the Southern Hemisphere

“…We attempt to understand the world around us by classifying it. Indeed, the order imposed through use of a taxonomy facilitates our management, use and/or conservation of natural resources (Buckeridge & Watts 2012). In the great scheme of things, the early Cainozoic is not too distant from our time and, not surprisingly, we find most of the organisms that lived then to be easily accommodated within the classification of modern biota.…”