[luckyme]

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This is a topic that always sticks in my craw. People make it out to be that there's no way to separate these groups into any legitimate categories and that just isn't true with the overwhelming majority of animals (ring-species aside).

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This is more a tangent than a topic specific question, but is it a valid refutation point to 'set aside' the main evidence that shows the flaw in the original claim?

luckyme

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I think my contention is that it's not a flaw in the original claim. Evolutionary scientists accept that continuum, but for any time there are reproductively isolated groups that can be called "species"

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Besides the temporal chain of existing lifeforms what about
a) ring species
b) those species that are isolated ( whether geographically or such cases as 'day active' and 'night active' groups) but could interbreed.

I take Dawkins point as not denying the usefulness of it for discussion purposes but to remember it's a fiction -

" But the Salamanders Tale explains why this is a human imposition rather than something deeply built into the natural world. Let us use names as if they really reflected a discontinuous reality, but by all means let's privately remember that , at least in the world of evolution, it is no more than a convenient fiction, a pandering to our own limitations." ( last comment referring to our brains having evolved to see it terms of discrete categories).

luckyme