Revisiting the “What”

Conservation assessments based on old taxonomy will be inadequate and misleading because they fail to include recent primary data.

The units of conservation – species – are subject to taxonomic artifacts when the circumscription of those species is not continually reevaluated in the light of new primary data.  Thus, conservation assessments based on old taxonomy will be inadequate and misleading because they fail to include recent primary data.  Within a given genus, every new collection has the potential to “redefine” the meanings of species within that genus.  A new collection may expand the distribution of a species, as seen above for Takhtajania,  or it may expand the very “concept” of a species by exhibiting a broader range of morphological variability.  Alternatively, a new collection may exhibit a range in variability that bridges the gap between two species, resulting in the merger of the concepts of two species into one.  Finally, it may exhibit a unique, heretofore unknown range of variation, necessitating the creation of a new species concept.  All of these modifications to the fundamental taxonomic framework that defines a species will have an impact on its conservation assessment.