23 species or less?
- Subject: 23 species or less?
- From: z*
- Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 10:07:10 +0100
Hi George
Thanks very much for your valuable and sound reply This must be
about the first I received from anyone of the Hosta society since
my paper appeared a year ago. I agree that the number of species
could be even lower than 23. Just as you were, I was caught
between what was best scientifically and what was best for the
gardening community. So in some cases I choose the latter. You
already cleaned up a lot what was so far accepted in the gardening
community To go even further as I did would not have been received
favorably at that time. However science progresses and there are
now new results based on total amount of DNA per nucleus. I could
not escape the result and had to bring the number of species back
to 23, about the same number as Fujita in 1976 who studied them
extensively in the field. I suspect that any results based on DNA
sequencing as you are planning will not bring back any of the taxa
now rejected by me, but might indeed lower the number even a bit
further. To give an example: H rupifraga could turn out to be better
placed as a subspecies of H longipes.
Ben J.M.Zonneveld
Clusius lab pobox 9505
2300 RA Leiden
The Netherlands
mintemp-16C(5F)
Zonneveld@RULbim.LeidenUniv.NL
Fax: 31-71-5274999
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