Yes, I agree -- but the perpetually unanswerable argument is: "which circumscription best represents the species-level boundaries". I agree, with a clear circumscription, there is one "correct" name to use (in theory -- but different interpretations of the Codes and incomplete nomenclature can fuzz that up a bit). But the trouble is that people often disagree on the best circumscription to use (lumpers v. splitters, etc.).

I agree, that with a better mechanism for encoding circumscriptions, we could at least have cleaner conversations about this (I think this is part of what phylogenetic nomenclature approaches are on about, except that they tend to strictly define circumscriptions in terms of clades, which gets messy when introgression/hybridization is at play). Without realizing it (in most cases), taxonomists tend to use one of several different proxies for taxon circumscriptions, with different levels of granularities:

- Types/Names-based (each type specimen of a name represents a sign post within a circumscription, and circumscriptions are defined by which of these sign posts fall within them). Basically, this is represented as a synonymy, and the heterotypic synonyms are proxies for the type specimens, which are the sign posts.

- Population-based (populations are defined -- often in terms of geographic distributions -- and these populations are used as more collective sets of organisms to represent circumscription boundaries). This approach is less common.

- Specimen-based (many specimens/individuals are enumerated as members of a taxon concept circumscription, to provide a richer set of circumscription boundaries). This is often the approached taken on taxonomic revisions, with large lists of "Material Examined". The specimens are often representatives of entire populations, so this method is similar to the previous, except with finer granularity.

- Character-based (taxon circumscriptions are defined by sets of characters). This is probably the most widely used way of establishing taxon concept/circumscription boundaries. I think it's probably the most practical, but in my mind is less explicit, because at best the characters are proxies for individual organisms, and I think most people think of taxon concepts as circumscriptions of organisms, rather than of character states.

There are others on this list who understand this stuff FAR better than I.

Aloha, Rich

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