Proposed Sympatry of Midas and Red Devil Cichlids

[Mark Smith]

"As this will be my final post,..." on August 14 2012 11:31 pm

but, apparently not...

"I'm dismayed that you have trouble reading." August 15 2012 3:51 am

[edburress]

I'm sorry Robert, but I'm having a hard time believing you've actually experienced the process. I've searched a variety of the scientific databases for papers published by you on cichlids or herps as you claim to be an expert and haven't found anything! Are you published at all?

Let's not get carried away, I found this in literally 15 seconds...
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1 ... 0984664363

[Nuchal Man]

Thank you Ed for your find, I missed that paper while searching I apologize. Apparently Robert is published, I also found another one of his papers. I shall read them. I'm surprised Robert wasn't more keen on telling us where to find some of his work.

[Nuchal Man]

Robert, I read your paper on Microdermatoglyphics: Basal Patterns and Transition Zones as well as a description by you for a Lampropeltis calligaster subspecies. I actually found both quite interesting and thought it was well done. It looks like you do good work as a herpetologist, which appears to be your specialty. I apologize for the earlier post where I doubt your credentials. However, that doesn't make your argument on proposed synonymy of Amphilophus labiatus and Amphilophus citrinellus a good one, it is extremely lacking and data deficient (you've provided no data yourself, just used that of Barluenga et al, 2006, in which they disagree with your conclusion. I feel you still have not responded to the other literature that is relevant to the topic like the the Geiger et al. papers.

[cichla]

Robert, the paper by Amadon (1949) does not help much here. The procedure described by Amadon is connected with the phenetic conception of the subspecies. At that time the subspecies was treated as a geographic aggregate of the species without any relevance for the evolution (origin) of new species (Mayr 1982). Nowadays, after the rise of the 'population thinking' geographic forms (subspecies) may (are) treated as evolving (sub-)units. At the first glance it sounds trivial but actually its quite different because these two approaches are based on distinct scientific concepts (class-concept versus entity-concept; see Reydon 2005). It is (from an epistemological point of view) not possible to mix them up. Besides this philosophical reason the Amadon procedure is also not connected with the 'problem' discussed here, because it treats with geographic variation only (subspecies in the 'old fashion'). But A. citrinellus and A. labiatus occurs in the same lake (syntopic). The application given by Amadon are much outdated and formulas are not in use anymore. We have now more sophisticated statistical procedures which are applicable to molecular and morphological data.

As you cite Mayr, the term 'race' is nowadays restricted (or synonymized) to 'geographic variation'. Hence, it is not applicable to A. citrinellus and A. labiatus as both are occuring in the very same lake. I guess you are talking about what modern biologists (ecologists, taxonomists) are calling a 'ecomorphological morph'. So, I think it is much better to use the current terminology instead of using a burden word like race.

Best, IS