Re: [ECOLOG-L] Ecology terminology Re: [ECOLOG-L] definition of native
*There is no precise terminology*, and can never be, for many concepts in ecology. The problem is that reality presents us with continua, with gradients without clear boundaries. Physicists who study light, don't, as far as I know, argue about the definition of red; they accept the nature of the spectrum and work with it mathematically. When precision matters, they speak of frequency or wavelength. *In biology*, species and other taxa represent continuously varying frequencies of genes bundled temporarily into organisms. There are patterns in this bundling, (the type of bundle we call a horse looks a lot like the type of bundle we call a donkey or a mule), but we can waste a lot of time arguing about the boundaries. *Landforms are no simpler*, and often grade insensibly together. Can one be sure where steppe, taiga, and tundra start and stop, or forest, woodland, grassland and desert? Behavioral scientists came up with autism spectrum disorder in the face of one of their troublesome continua. On one level, most of us realize that these issues aren't worth fighting about, *but then the law and commerce get involved*. A species gets on the endangered list, or not. (Which once caused some creative whalers to invent a new species, the Pygmy Blue Whale. Very similar the the Great Blue, but smaller. And, strangely, younger...because they hadn't grown up yet. By the time you can prove such lies, a lot of animals die.) Now there is evidence that polar bears and grizzlies are the same species, by the criterion of being cross-fertile. *Even religion has something at stake *in believing in fictional boundaries. I have heard arguments about the kinds of animals named by Adam and Eve. Is the African elephant the same kind as the Indian elephant? The answer had critical logistical implications for Noah. I suppose that a physicist who runs a traffic light could argue that it wasn't really red, and show spectral tracings to prove it. My reason for mentioning these silly cases is to point out the danger of getting too hung up on terminology, and to encourage people to find alternatives to rigid labels. For instance, numerical taxonomy allows us to treat genetic or phenotypic variability in terms of cladograms (trees) without worrying about names, and perhaps schemes like Holdridge's life zones and various diversity indices do the same for ecology. While these have not gained acceptance at the level where they can be used in law (as far as I know), there may be hope for this. For instance, the public has embraced the concept of wind chill factor as a statistic more useful (when deciding what to wear) than mere temperature. *Getting back to the original question:* an appropriate answer for Is post oak native to Texas? need not be a mere yes or no. How about a detailed range map superimposed on a map showing political boundaries, perhaps with date information included? The viewer could decide for him/her self if a species whose range had one little projection into a corner of Texas should be considered native to Texas or not. It is always possible that different workers assembling the range data used different criteria for defining the species, but there is no avoiding that for historical data. *In summary:* let's use words, squishy or otherwise, when we're chatting, but when precision matters, let's present data that don't rely on artificial boundaries. Martin M. Meiss 2012/3/22 Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net Ecolog and Ian, If the term is squishy, let's use more precise terminology . . . So what IS that precise terminology? WT - Original Message - From: Ian Ramjohn ramjo...@msu.edu To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Friday, March 16, 2012 7:48 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Ecology terminology Re: [ECOLOG-L] definition of native I think we're missing the point here. The problem isn't with the definitions of native - it's an English word that's always going to have a range of meanings. In other words - it's a poor term for science. Is post oak native to Texas? is a less than ideal question, because the answer is binary - yes, or no. If you're really going to answer that question - as a scientist - you'd say that (some or all) of Texas lies within the (pre-settlement, historical, or whatever term you want to define) range of the species _based_on_[certain]_data_. With the obvious caveats, in the case of the US and Canada, that species ranges reflect ongoing migration since the end of the last ice age. Or, no, data suggest that TX is outside the native range of the species. Fighting over semantics or values is pointless. If the term is squishy, let's use more precise terminology, and be explicit about the uncertainty. Unless you're speaking to politicians, in which case you need to find a way to somehow convey an amount of certainty that can't be misconstrued, while still being nuanced enough that they can't (easily) turn what you say around to try
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Ecology terminology Re: [ECOLOG-L] definition of native
Ecolog and Ian, If the term is squishy, let's use more precise terminology . . . So what IS that precise terminology? WT - Original Message - From: Ian Ramjohn ramjo...@msu.edu To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Friday, March 16, 2012 7:48 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Ecology terminology Re: [ECOLOG-L] definition of native I think we're missing the point here. The problem isn't with the definitions of native - it's an English word that's always going to have a range of meanings. In other words - it's a poor term for science. Is post oak native to Texas? is a less than ideal question, because the answer is binary - yes, or no. If you're really going to answer that question - as a scientist - you'd say that (some or all) of Texas lies within the (pre-settlement, historical, or whatever term you want to define) range of the species _based_on_[certain]_data_. With the obvious caveats, in the case of the US and Canada, that species ranges reflect ongoing migration since the end of the last ice age. Or, no, data suggest that TX is outside the native range of the species. Fighting over semantics or values is pointless. If the term is squishy, let's use more precise terminology, and be explicit about the uncertainty. Unless you're speaking to politicians, in which case you need to find a way to somehow convey an amount of certainty that can't be misconstrued, while still being nuanced enough that they can't (easily) turn what you say around to try to discredit you. And even then, the media will simply what you say, and the THOSE words will be used to discredit you. Quoting Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net: Honorable Forum: Anybody who has any sense knows that words are imperfect, and anybody who has read Alice in Wonderland (or was it Through the Looking Glass? I just don't remember) knows that a word means just what I (or the Red Queen?) say it means. Words are communication tools, and for them to work at perfect pitch, the parties to the communication have to understand and mean exactly the same thing, especially if it is to be considered scientific. Ecology is a squishy subject, so it follows that there may even NEED to be a certain amount of squish in its terms. It has apparently endless variables that are in a constant state of change. So ecologist simply have to come to common agreement what native means (and does not mean). Izzat ad populem? WT - Original Message - From: Andrew Pierce mindi...@gmail.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Friday, March 16, 2012 2:58 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] definition of native While the definition you provide might be a suitable working definition, it is not a suitable scientific definition. As a counter-example to your claim it was not taken there by human agency, but either evolved there or migrated there prior to human record keeping there are species that the first humans brought to North America; these species violate the either-or construction of your definition because we don't even 'know' all of the species that came to North America this way. To further push the envelope, what about species that were moved around by other hominids (*Homo habilis, H. erectus*) or neandertals? Are they native because they weren't moved by *H. sapiens*? Or are the non-native because they were moved by agents? What about species that were introduced by humans and then evolved into new species? Is the introduced species non-native, but the evolutionary descendant is native? Appeals to the crowd (*argument ad populum*) do not invalidate these critiques and neither do *ad hominem *attacks. Finally, the point that 'native' is a definition that eludes us still stands. While local and pragmatic definitions of it might exist, a global, scientifically defensible definition of it does not exist. Andrew D. Pierce, Ph.D Post-Doctoral Research Associate Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management University of Hawai'i USFS-Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 4:42 PM, David L. McNeely mcnee...@cox.net wrote: well, you can make word games out of simple concepts if you wish to. Whenever most sane people refer to a species as being native in a place, they mean it was not taken there by human agency, but either evolved there or migrated there prior to human record keeping. Pretty simple. The other constructs you mention complicate matters, yes, but they do not define the concept of a species being native to a locality. The multiple maps of native range for ponderosa pine may be based on different data sets, or they may be based on different definitions of the species. Those matters do not alter what is meant by a species being native in a location, they just illustrate that we don't always have all the information, or that sometimes we disagree on the data. mcneely Matt Chew anek...@gmail.com wrote: Jason Persichetti's contention, we all know what is meant by the idiom
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Ecology terminology Re: [ECOLOG-L] definition of native
Howdy from the original poster Yes, I did receive a lot of helpful responses, most (all?) of which were posted to the list, to some of which I responded outside the list. And yes, my original question was poorly worded in the sense that I did not mean to imply post oak was not native to Texas. However, that seemed to have sparked an (unintended) interesting discussion about what the word means, prompting me to plead for excusing my non-ecologist ignorance on this forum. We are most interested in any insight you all here might have on why post oak -- at least the trees/leaves we measured last year -- performed (in terms of photosynthetic activity and heat + drought tolerance) better than water oak and southern red oak. There may be multiple reasons for that, but one thing we (naively?) thought about was whether post oak is/has better adapted to the Texas climate, which one could argue might stem from it having grown there for much longer than the other species (native vs. not so native ?). In that aspect, some of the links circulated are not that helpful. It appears to me that e.g. the USDA calls anything native that occurs in a state, albeit in niches, and then calls the species native to the whole state. As pointed out by one reply, post oak grows in a large area of Texas named after it, because it is the dominant tree species there. The other two species do not have that distinction. I received some anecdotal evidence from foresters -- related to mortality -- that confirm that post oak seems better adapted to Texas, but I am looking for hard evidence, if any. Thanks for your patience reading through this post, and thanks everyone for replying to my original inquiry ... though poorly worded. Best, Gunnar On 3/17/2012 05:41 PM, Wayne Tyson wrote: Ecolog: Resetarits makes some excellent points. While I quite understand the resistance to using such terms as squishy, I was trying to make a between-the-lines point: The term needs to match the phenomenon. Any term should meet the test of relevance and clarity, and everyone should recognize that everything is context. Post-oaks, for example, worked as a term in my childhood because everybody knew what post-oak meant. Native to Texas is true, too, provided that the reader has the sense to know that that means that post-oaks occur within the political boundaries known as Texas. Exceptions, as necessary, should be noted by the writer where necessary, and by the reader, with the exception that a more elaborate explanation is necessary by the writer if the reader does not understand that the statement does not mean that post-oak is ONLY native to Texas. We should hear from the original poster regarding whether or not the original question has received relevant responses. I personally found the question vague, and therefore suspicious. But it did awaken some thoughts that should prove useful--IF there is follow-up to a conclusion, however conditioned and provisional. WT -- --- Dr. Gunnar W. Schade Department of Atmospheric Sciences Texas AM University 1104 Eller OM Building College Station, TX 77843-3150 e-mail: g...@geos.tamu.edu http://georesearch.tamu.edu/blogs/oaktreeproject/ --- Climate change detonates the ideological scaffolding on which contemporary conservatism rests. There is simply no way to square a belief system that vilifies collective action and venerates total market freedom with a problem that demands collective action on an unprecedented scale and a dramatic reining in of the market forces that created and are deepening the crisis. Naomi Klein, November 2011
[ECOLOG-L] Habitat Niche Stress Environment Genetics Re: [ECOLOG-L] Ecology terminology Re: [ECOLOG-L] definition of native
Ecolog: I don't know about the rest of post-oak's range, or its genetics, but I wonder about two things (actually I wonder about more, but I'm trying to stick to my own suggested practice of keeping the issues to one--in this case stress and adaptation thereto): In the part of Texas where I used to camp in the post-oak woods the soil was pretty much blow-sand. Infiltration and percolation were high, leaching nutrients and favoring deep rooting (I have pulled post-oak stumps, but not done any research on this) forms and depriving shallow-rooting forms. Something like the pine-barrens? I also wonder about the nasty habit of oaks to hybridize, and where post-oak fits into that. WT - Original Message - From: Gunnar Schade g...@tamu.edu To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Monday, March 19, 2012 6:50 AM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Ecology terminology Re: [ECOLOG-L] definition of native Howdy from the original poster Yes, I did receive a lot of helpful responses, most (all?) of which were posted to the list, to some of which I responded outside the list. And yes, my original question was poorly worded in the sense that I did not mean to imply post oak was not native to Texas. However, that seemed to have sparked an (unintended) interesting discussion about what the word means, prompting me to plead for excusing my non-ecologist ignorance on this forum. We are most interested in any insight you all here might have on why post oak -- at least the trees/leaves we measured last year -- performed (in terms of photosynthetic activity and heat + drought tolerance) better than water oak and southern red oak. There may be multiple reasons for that, but one thing we (naively?) thought about was whether post oak is/has better adapted to the Texas climate, which one could argue might stem from it having grown there for much longer than the other species (native vs. not so native ?). In that aspect, some of the links circulated are not that helpful. It appears to me that e.g. the USDA calls anything native that occurs in a state, albeit in niches, and then calls the species native to the whole state. As pointed out by one reply, post oak grows in a large area of Texas named after it, because it is the dominant tree species there. The other two species do not have that distinction. I received some anecdotal evidence from foresters -- related to mortality -- that confirm that post oak seems better adapted to Texas, but I am looking for hard evidence, if any. Thanks for your patience reading through this post, and thanks everyone for replying to my original inquiry ... though poorly worded. Best, Gunnar On 3/17/2012 05:41 PM, Wayne Tyson wrote: Ecolog: Resetarits makes some excellent points. While I quite understand the resistance to using such terms as squishy, I was trying to make a between-the-lines point: The term needs to match the phenomenon. Any term should meet the test of relevance and clarity, and everyone should recognize that everything is context. Post-oaks, for example, worked as a term in my childhood because everybody knew what post-oak meant. Native to Texas is true, too, provided that the reader has the sense to know that that means that post-oaks occur within the political boundaries known as Texas. Exceptions, as necessary, should be noted by the writer where necessary, and by the reader, with the exception that a more elaborate explanation is necessary by the writer if the reader does not understand that the statement does not mean that post-oak is ONLY native to Texas. We should hear from the original poster regarding whether or not the original question has received relevant responses. I personally found the question vague, and therefore suspicious. But it did awaken some thoughts that should prove useful--IF there is follow-up to a conclusion, however conditioned and provisional. WT -- --- Dr. Gunnar W. Schade Department of Atmospheric Sciences Texas AM University 1104 Eller OM Building College Station, TX 77843-3150 e-mail: g...@geos.tamu.edu http://georesearch.tamu.edu/blogs/oaktreeproject/ --- Climate change detonates the ideological scaffolding on which contemporary conservatism rests. There is simply no way to square a belief system that vilifies collective action and venerates total market freedom with a problem that demands collective action on an unprecedented scale and a dramatic reining in of the market forces that created and are deepening the crisis. Naomi Klein, November 2011 - No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 10.0.1424 / Virus Database: 2113/4880 - Release Date: 03/19/12
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Ecology terminology Re: [ECOLOG-L] definition of native
I think we're missing the point here. The problem isn't with the definitions of native - it's an English word that's always going to have a range of meanings. In other words - it's a poor term for science. Is post oak native to Texas? is a less than ideal question, because the answer is binary - yes, or no. If you're really going to answer that question - as a scientist - you'd say that (some or all) of Texas lies within the (pre-settlement, historical, or whatever term you want to define) range of the species _based_on_[certain]_data_. With the obvious caveats, in the case of the US and Canada, that species ranges reflect ongoing migration since the end of the last ice age. Or, no, data suggest that TX is outside the native range of the species. Fighting over semantics or values is pointless. If the term is squishy, let's use more precise terminology, and be explicit about the uncertainty. Unless you're speaking to politicians, in which case you need to find a way to somehow convey an amount of certainty that can't be misconstrued, while still being nuanced enough that they can't (easily) turn what you say around to try to discredit you. And even then, the media will simply what you say, and the THOSE words will be used to discredit you. Quoting Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net: Honorable Forum: Anybody who has any sense knows that words are imperfect, and anybody who has read Alice in Wonderland (or was it Through the Looking Glass? I just don't remember) knows that a word means just what I (or the Red Queen?) say it means. Words are communication tools, and for them to work at perfect pitch, the parties to the communication have to understand and mean exactly the same thing, especially if it is to be considered scientific. Ecology is a squishy subject, so it follows that there may even NEED to be a certain amount of squish in its terms. It has apparently endless variables that are in a constant state of change. So ecologist simply have to come to common agreement what native means (and does not mean). Izzat ad populem? WT - Original Message - From: Andrew Pierce mindi...@gmail.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Friday, March 16, 2012 2:58 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] definition of native While the definition you provide might be a suitable working definition, it is not a suitable scientific definition. As a counter-example to your claim it was not taken there by human agency, but either evolved there or migrated there prior to human record keeping there are species that the first humans brought to North America; these species violate the either-or construction of your definition because we don't even 'know' all of the species that came to North America this way. To further push the envelope, what about species that were moved around by other hominids (*Homo habilis, H. erectus*) or neandertals? Are they native because they weren't moved by *H. sapiens*? Or are the non-native because they were moved by agents? What about species that were introduced by humans and then evolved into new species? Is the introduced species non-native, but the evolutionary descendant is native? Appeals to the crowd (*argument ad populum*) do not invalidate these critiques and neither do *ad hominem *attacks. Finally, the point that 'native' is a definition that eludes us still stands. While local and pragmatic definitions of it might exist, a global, scientifically defensible definition of it does not exist. Andrew D. Pierce, Ph.D Post-Doctoral Research Associate Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management University of Hawai'i USFS-Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 4:42 PM, David L. McNeely mcnee...@cox.net wrote: well, you can make word games out of simple concepts if you wish to. Whenever most sane people refer to a species as being native in a place, they mean it was not taken there by human agency, but either evolved there or migrated there prior to human record keeping. Pretty simple. The other constructs you mention complicate matters, yes, but they do not define the concept of a species being native to a locality. The multiple maps of native range for ponderosa pine may be based on different data sets, or they may be based on different definitions of the species. Those matters do not alter what is meant by a species being native in a location, they just illustrate that we don't always have all the information, or that sometimes we disagree on the data. mcneely Matt Chew anek...@gmail.com wrote: Jason Persichetti's contention, we all know what is meant by the idiom is precisely false. I routinely show audiences eight different maps purporting to represent the native range of _Pinus_ponderosa_, prepared for different purposes by different authorities. They can't all be correct AND mean the same thing. What native species denotes actually varies quite a bit, and no wonder,
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Ecology terminology Re: [ECOLOG-L] definition of native
Ecology has long been, and continues to be, terminologically challenged. 16 years ago several of us (Fauth et al. 1996) made what we felt was a valiant attempt to bring some clarity to a set of terms that would seem to lend themselves to a degree of precision, or at least clear functional definition, and that had existing definitions in the literature. These included such staples as community, guild, ensemble, etc. The initial impetus for this was our observation that the term community, a rather central term in ecology, was being essentially used to describe the stuff I am studying, rather than anything truly definable. So, we had bird communities, bat communities, zooplankton communities, larval anuran communities, and things like benthic fish communities, herbivore communities and pollinator communities, etc. etc. Obviously, NONE of these amalgams met any existing definition of community, but they did fit definitions of guild, assemblage, ensembl! e, etc. We thought, well, this should be easy enough to fix! Just lay it out clearly, in a logical structure, using existing definitions, and voila! The idea was picked up by John Lawton and has also appeared in several texts, but has to a large extent fallen on deaf ears. Why?? Go ask Alice - people DO apparently want a word to mean just what I choose for it to mean - no more, no less. So, 16 years later, an admittedly brief, unscientific, nonrandom survey of titles in ecology journals actually surprised me a bit, in that the ubiquitous use of the term community seems to be somewhat reduced in favor of more precise terms such as assemblage, or more detailed descriptors of what people are actually working on. Nonetheless, many of the old favorites are alive and well, mammalian communities, seabird communities, herbivore communities and of course plant communities, to mention but a few. Change comes slowly, if at all. My point in the current context is that words matter, and precise definitions for words used in science matter even more. The concepts may indeed be fuzzy (post oak itself is a construct based on one or many definitions of species - communities may or may not exist as discrete entities), but when two people use the word species or community or native in an ecological context it should mean the same thing, or involve sufficient modifiers to make the differences in usage clear. If the word cannot be strictly defined or a definition agreed upon, then we must follow Ian's advice and use whatever combination of words necessary to make ourselves and our information clear. The statements brook trout are native to North America and brook trout are native to Eastern North America are both true, I would think, under any reasonable definition of native. One is simply more precise (and hence has less potential to mislead). In reality the terms native and non-native,! by their very nature, have no real meaning without some further historical context and it is this historical context that informs conservation and restoration. On 3/16/12 10:48 PM, Ian Ramjohn ramjo...@msu.edu wrote: I think we're missing the point here. The problem isn't with the definitions of native - it's an English word that's always going to have a range of meanings. In other words - it's a poor term for science. Is post oak native to Texas? is a less than ideal question, because the answer is binary - yes, or no. If you're really going to answer that question - as a scientist - you'd say that (some or all) of Texas lies within the (pre-settlement, historical, or whatever term you want to define) range of the species _based_on_[certain]_data_. With the obvious caveats, in the case of the US and Canada, that species ranges reflect ongoing migration since the end of the last ice age. Or, no, data suggest that TX is outside the native range of the species. Fighting over semantics or values is pointless. If the term is squishy, let's use more precise terminology, and be explicit about the uncertainty. Unless you're speaking to politicians, in which case you need to find a way to somehow convey an amount of certainty that can't be misconstrued, while still being nuanced enough that they can't (easily) turn what you say around to try to discredit you. And even then, the media will simply what you say, and the THOSE words will be used to discredit you. Quoting Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net: Honorable Forum: Anybody who has any sense knows that words are imperfect, and anybody who has read Alice in Wonderland (or was it Through the Looking Glass? I just don't remember) knows that a word means just what I (or the Red Queen?) say it means. Words are communication tools, and for them to work at perfect pitch, the parties to the communication have to understand and mean exactly the same thing, especially if it is to be considered scientific. Ecology is a squishy subject, so it follows that there may even NEED to be
[ECOLOG-L] Ecology terminology Re: [ECOLOG-L] definition of native
Honorable Forum: Anybody who has any sense knows that words are imperfect, and anybody who has read Alice in Wonderland (or was it Through the Looking Glass? I just don't remember) knows that a word means just what I (or the Red Queen?) say it means. Words are communication tools, and for them to work at perfect pitch, the parties to the communication have to understand and mean exactly the same thing, especially if it is to be considered scientific. Ecology is a squishy subject, so it follows that there may even NEED to be a certain amount of squish in its terms. It has apparently endless variables that are in a constant state of change. So ecologist simply have to come to common agreement what native means (and does not mean). Izzat ad populem? WT - Original Message - From: Andrew Pierce mindi...@gmail.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Friday, March 16, 2012 2:58 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] definition of native While the definition you provide might be a suitable working definition, it is not a suitable scientific definition. As a counter-example to your claim it was not taken there by human agency, but either evolved there or migrated there prior to human record keeping there are species that the first humans brought to North America; these species violate the either-or construction of your definition because we don't even 'know' all of the species that came to North America this way. To further push the envelope, what about species that were moved around by other hominids (*Homo habilis, H. erectus*) or neandertals? Are they native because they weren't moved by *H. sapiens*? Or are the non-native because they were moved by agents? What about species that were introduced by humans and then evolved into new species? Is the introduced species non-native, but the evolutionary descendant is native? Appeals to the crowd (*argument ad populum*) do not invalidate these critiques and neither do *ad hominem *attacks. Finally, the point that 'native' is a definition that eludes us still stands. While local and pragmatic definitions of it might exist, a global, scientifically defensible definition of it does not exist. Andrew D. Pierce, Ph.D Post-Doctoral Research Associate Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management University of Hawai'i USFS-Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 4:42 PM, David L. McNeely mcnee...@cox.net wrote: well, you can make word games out of simple concepts if you wish to. Whenever most sane people refer to a species as being native in a place, they mean it was not taken there by human agency, but either evolved there or migrated there prior to human record keeping. Pretty simple. The other constructs you mention complicate matters, yes, but they do not define the concept of a species being native to a locality. The multiple maps of native range for ponderosa pine may be based on different data sets, or they may be based on different definitions of the species. Those matters do not alter what is meant by a species being native in a location, they just illustrate that we don't always have all the information, or that sometimes we disagree on the data. mcneely Matt Chew anek...@gmail.com wrote: Jason Persichetti's contention, we all know what is meant by the idiom is precisely false. I routinely show audiences eight different maps purporting to represent the native range of _Pinus_ponderosa_, prepared for different purposes by different authorities. They can't all be correct AND mean the same thing. What native species denotes actually varies quite a bit, and no wonder, since it includes three explicit degrees of freedom (specifications of place, time, and taxon) at least two tacit ones (who counts as a human, and what counts as human agency) plus an authority claim. Authority claims alone entail ad hoc redefinitions of native; e.g., USGS NAS roils the waters by calling _Micropterus_salmoides_ a native transplant in the United States outside a particular set of hydrologic units. That is a political calculation. What native species connotes also varies, but recently, typically indicates the idiomist is making or ratifying a judgment that some organism has a moral claim to persisting in a specified place because no human is known to have physically moved it – or its forbears. But we relax various aspects of that as easily as we apply them. As is (remarkably) typical of ecology's idioms, we have no calibrated conception of this supposedly fundamental characteristic. Blaming the shortcomings of language for our failure to formulate a coherent concept is a red herring unless our consensus native really is an inarticulable intuition. If it is (and nothing I've read so far suggests otherwise) there's nothing to calibrate, much less recalibrate, and we're not doing science. Matthew K Chew Assistant Research Professor Arizona State University School of Life
