Another Orang-utan species? I doubt it too. I strongly doubt it

Orang-utan in Borneo
Orphaned animal photographed in 1999

No sooner had I written the last post on ‘taxonomic inflation’ than the media were sparking with news of a new species of orang-utan from Sumatra. I read the BBC News and The Times versions and found the claim unconvincing. I was just in the process of looking up the original paper when Jerry Coyne’s and Greg Mayer’s excoriating criticism—and of the ‘phylogenetic species concept’ in general—of the claim pinged into my Inbox. I will not repeat it since you can read it here on Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution is True website. Make sure you read the comments as well.

Coming after a similar paper on splitting the giraffe into four species (again covered by Jerry Coyne here) published in the same journal (which much have referees or editors sympathetic to, or uncritical of, the phylogenetic species concept), I am particularly concerned that such claims, indeed any claims, are parroted uncritically by the news media and thus presented to the public as established fact. Science by hyped press release is not promoting the public understanding of science; the reverse in fact.

The ‘splitters’ of existing species appear to think that they are advancing the cause of conservation but they may be doing harm, as Shai Meiri and Georgina Mace warned ten years ago. Others have noted that in attempting to conserve species, splitting into ‘pseudo-species’ using the phylogenetic species concept may do more harm than good. By insisting on breeding each form separately (as is being done right now with the Bornean and Sumatran ‘species’ of orang-utan which were split earlier) zoos may be reducing the genetic diversity of already inbred captive populations, thereby decreasing the chances of survival should a re-introduction programme into a slightly-changed or degraded habitat be needed in the future on either of those islands.

The question of what constitutes a species goes on and on and there is no simple answer but it seems to me and to many others that the phylogenetic species concept is deeply flawed and that if the same arguments are applied to Man, then our species too must be split and split and split again. The modern molecular methodology applied to determine genetic lineage must be very seductive and there is no argument on the technical excellence of much of the work. However, I suspect it is another case of too much ‘molecular’ and not enough ‘biology’.

So, for the record I will continue to refer to the Orang-utan as Pongo pygmaeus whether it be from Borneo or Sumatra and to the Giraffe as Giraffa camelopardalis wherever in Africa it may be from. There is no need to be a sheep in the cinderella world of taxonomy.

Reticulated form of the Giraffe, Northern Kenya 1991

Masai form of the Giraffe, Kenya 1991