Subspecies protection, the ESA and "institutional vertebratism"

Or, to put it another way, High Country News getting "woke" about butterflies.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all here to protect species, and within butterflies, on frittilaries, I've shot pix of the well-known G. fritt and one or two others, like this Hydaspe at Olympic.

That said, I have issues, issues biological, philosophical and public policy based about employing, or deploying, the Endangered Species Act at the subspecies level for ANY species, insects or other arthropods, birds, mammals, reptiles or amphibians. Have for years.

Biologically, as the folks at Fish and Wildlife, as well as Gang Green and not so Gang Green environmental groups know, there's no uniformly accepted definition of "species." And, I'm not going fundagelical Christian with "kinds." I think there's no problem at the genus level — at least in today's biological world, where we have the help of DNA analysis. And, there's definitely not a problem at the family level and above.

But species? Yes. And certainly, for subspecies.

Now, HCN might trump me and say that today's subspecies might be tomorrow's species. I can reply, I know that, and have run into it, with photos, on the blue grouse being separated into two species, dusky grouse and sooty grouse, rather than them being subspecies. 

At the same time? That Sword of Damocles cuts both ways.

This is related to the old "demarcation problem"in philosophy, as philosopher and biologist Massimo Pigliucci knows. What criteria do we use to define a species, and how "leaky" are the "borders" between two similar species?

This, in turn impacts public policy, and goes right to the story. Since insects in general get the short end of the stick on ESA protection money, why are we worried about subspecies? That's especially since, per the story, we still know MUCH less about lifestyles of many insects than, say, about mule deer vs. blacktail deer.

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Non-HCN, while I'm here? Gender, while based on biological sex, is ultimately cultural, and therefore, contra Riley Black, snakes don't have gender.