Question

Presume PSC was favored more than different species concepts, for example BCS. PCS stands for phylogenetic species concept. What kind of consequences would there be for

a) discourse on speciation evolutionary mechanisms

b) species diversity studies within ecological communities

c) species diversity estimates on a worldwide basis

d) conservation practices under legal structures, for example the U.S. Endangered Species Act?

Answer 1

According to Phylogenetic Species Concept (PSC) , a species that group of organisms that have common ancestor and are present on a single branch of a phylogenetic tree. Those which originate from a common diverging point but form separate branches are separate species. For example, in the tree shown below A and C are separate species but comparably closer in phylogeny than A and B or C and B.

Speciation evolutionary mechanisms:

On following the PSC, the concept outlines the ancestory of different organisms and hence provides better approaches to study the evolution of the morphological features based on genetic variations. Because PSC relies on the morphological changes or genetic variations among the organisms, in this way an organism of same species with different morphological characteristics is considered a separate species and will contribute to evolution. But applying PSC brings an insight into the evolution of various morphological features which is useful in the understanding the overall evolutionary mechanism.

Species diversity studies within ecological communities: In an ecological community a number of species are present and diversity refers to how different these are from each other and how evenly these species are distributed in an ecological community. The PSC concept brings about that how phylogenetically close species are present in a particular community. By applying this concept, the group of organisms from same ancestory but different morphological characteristics would be considered as separate species and the study following this concept would assume the community to be having more species diversity in comparison to those studies following other concepts.

Species diversity estimates on a worldwide basis: By following this concept as indicated above, the species diversity would be higher than the actual and the subspecies in certain cases may not be recognized which will lead to faulty estimates and more than actual number of species would be taken into account. It has a benefit of including the species which reproduce asexually as well as the extinct species but the total species may come out to be more and some are even difficult to be identified as species in real sense.

Conservation practices under legal structures: Conservation laws take into account how to protect the biodiversity but the species concept brings about the understanding of what to protect and for that it is mandatory to clearly identify what to protect and how to protect. PSC concept is best suited for conservation practices as it helps in identifying different groups as species and can be better in protecting the endangered species. The overestimation of species may result in more effort on conserving the biodiversity but definitely would not rule out some of the species that are actually need concern. This concept relies on considering each genetically different group as a species and hence will result in better conservation of them.