Lumpers vs Splitters

[jarich]

After reading a few threads about boas I thought I would see what everyone's opinions are regarding speciation. This is an age old debate among scientists and always an interesting discussion I think. I came to it from my work in Paleoanthropology regarding the evolution of humans, but it works for all species. Im going to go really basic here, but essentially Lumpers say that it takes large scale variation to warrant a new species (they lump groups of species more closely together), whereas Splitters say that very little variation is required to call an animal a new species, sub species, etc (they take groups and split them up into many more species, sub species, etc). To take an example from the forum here, the present discussion on boas regarding sub species is a good one. There are some who view each different local variation as a sub species, while others call them all the same species with no sub species at all. So where do you all sit?

I myself am a lumper. I think that local variation does not warrant a sub species, and that there is rarely actually such a thing as a sub species. Variation within a species can be great, just look at humans and dogs. A Great Dane is the same species as a chihuahua, and Swede is the same species as an Indian.

Let the debate begin!