Conspecific simply means ‘belonging to the same species.’ Like two Robbins. Simple. Right? Just sorting birds into groups. E.a.s.y. Right? Well…..
No.
But the problem may not be what you think. We’ve got biologists, geneticists, paleontologists, taxonomists (and whatever). With all the tools of modern science. We know a lot about birds. Sorting them should be a breeze. And would be. If we only knew what a species was. Experts can’t define it.
You think I’m kidding? It’s not settled. People who get paid to think about stuff like this can’t agree. So they argue. And argue.
Some modern philosophers spend whole careers pondering it. (Yes, there is a philosophy of species.) Aristotle took the first crack a couple thousand years ago. He called it ‘species.’ (But he was Greek. So it came out like: εἶδος.) And so εἶδος as it turns out is the origin of ‘species.’
And that was good enough for everyone for 2000 years, with just a couple tweaks every 500 years or so.
Then came Darwin. And things got ugly.
People thought they knew what a species was. But Darwin tossed the whole thing up in the air. When it came down it splintered into pieces. You see it’s not so much that we don’t have a definition. We have too many. More than a couple dozen. And none of them agree.
Charles had created one big headache. It’s called “The Species Problem.”
Scientists are still duking it out. Disagreements. Vehement disagreements. Angry, name-calling, digs and Gibes disagreements. These are scientists remember.
But the question remains: what makes a species, well…a species?
Appearance? Genetics? Ancestry? The list is long. Some say it doesn’t even matter. The whole thing is a product of the way our brain works, not nature.
The best known (and Birder’s favorite) is the so called “Biological” concept. It’s simple. Clear cut: ‘Birds don’t interbreed.’ Simple as that. They don’t reproduce outside their own species. Ever. It’s what we’ve been taught. That way we always know who is breeding with whom. Trouble is: sometimes little whom turns out to be a little what.
For example: a male Mallard,
Mates with a different species: American Black Duck
And they get Junior here: a Mallard/Black Duck Hybrid (probably)
Fact is, species do interbreed. We don’t know how many. ( Partly because we can’t keep an eye on all of them all the time.) Maybe 10%. Maybe more. Kind of pokes a hole in the Biological-concept balloon doesn’t it?
Which illustrates “The Species Problem” in a nutshell. More than two dozen concepts. Something wrong with all of them.
So here we are 2000 years (and 160 years of arguing and carrying on) later. And we still haven’t come up with anything better than Aristotle’s first swing at it. And thinking about it. He may just have got it right in the first place:
What he said was this: 'Species' is…“That which makes it what it is.”
Good enough for me.
Distinguishing marks: Odd.