[Taxacom] Race and taxonomy

[Richard Jensen]

Thanks, Karl,

I think the bottom line is, is there any justification to the concept 
that there are recognizable subsets of tyhe human species, whether we 
call them subspecies or races or populations, etc.  I presume we ar all 
aware that, in terms of genetic variation, total variation among samples 
of humans is dominated by "within" population variation, with only about 
4-6 % of the total representing among-population variation.  Thus, the 
argument that the greatest difference between any two randomly chosen 
individuals from two different continents is less than the difference 
between any two randomly chosen individuals from the same continent.

My question is, Is the variation that allows us to determine, with a 
high degree of probability, that my ancestry is from northern Europe and 
my colleagues' ancestry is from, say, western Africa or eastern Asia, 
biologically meaningful?

Cheers,

Dick J

Richard Jensen, Professor
Department of Biology
Saint Mary’s College
Notre Dame, IN 46556
Tel: 574-284-4674



Karl Magnacca wrote:
> On Mon, October 6, 2008 7:29 pm, Richard Jensen wrote:
>   
>> I have become involved in an interesting discussion on my campus.  One
>> of our faculty proposed a new course that included, in its statement of
>> intent, the following clause:  "...race has no biological basis."  I
>> took exception to this on the grounds that race is a legitimate rank in
>> the taxonomic hierarchy and can prove useful when dealing with
>> variability within species, regardless of whether the species are
>> plants, fungi, animals, or humans.
>>     
>
> There are multiple issues here.  Just because it has no biological basis
> doesn't mean it's not useful.  It can be handy for categorizing
> specimens that kinda-sorta look a little different, but grade into each
> other.  It is, after all, possible that eventually a biological basis
> may be found for them, such as a morphological character no one had
> noticed before or genetic differentiation.  At the same, it's an
> inherently fuzzy concept, so I don't think it's a legitimate rank.
>
> Karl
> =====================
> Karl Magnacca
> Postdoctoral Researcher
> Department of Zoology
> Trinity College, Dublin 2
> Ireland
>
>