Justin Bzovy (MacEwan University)
Species pluralists argue that there is more than one legitimate species concept, but fail to fully explore the ways concepts interact if we accept pluralism. Since different concepts often cross-classify, most pluralists stress the separation of legitimate species concepts, rather than the extent to which they might be integrated. The aim of this paper is to put species pluralism into practice by showing how a toolbox account of species concepts can make sense of two seemingly incompatible aims: local classificatory consilience and cross-classification. As this paper will show, systematists aim at achieving a degree of local classificatory consilience. However, this aim is not always achieved, but is a "meta-heuristic" that provides insight into the research phenomena even when local classificatory consilience fails (O'Malley 2013). When researchers fail to achieve local classificatory consilience, e.g., cryptic species (species that are morphologically indistinguishable, but cannot interbreed), the use of different species concepts can uncover details about the operating speciation mechanisms. By treating local classificatory consilience as a meta-heuristic, my toolbox pluralism explains why species concepts are flexible: sometimes cross-classifying, and sometimes aligning. In order to highlight this flexibility, I focus on species discovery in the large-spored Metschnikowia clade and related genera.
