I know the Parent Taxon is itself a circumscription of its included children. But my question was whether the parent taxon is an intrinsic property of each child?

Basically, assuming that "Aedes triseriatus" and "Ochlerotatus triseriatus" refer to precisely the same set of individual organisms, should they be regarded as separate "taxon concepts", because the same species epithet in each case is the child of a different parent? If "Parent Taxon" is an intrinsic property of a "taxon concept", then they are different. But if taxon concept effectively equals circumscription, then these two name-combinations are different labels for the *same* taxon concept.

Rich

P.S. As far as we know, the ultimate circumscription is a subatomic particle, with layers of atoms, molecules, organelles, cells, and organs below the specimen-level circumsctiption... :-)

-----Original Message----- From: Mark Wilden [mailto:mark@mwilden.com] Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2010 10:10 AM To: Richard Pyle Cc: Peter DeVries; tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] Name is species concept thinking

On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 1:00 PM, Richard Pyle deepreef@bishopmuseum.org wrote:

...

I guess a key question that I'd like to get feedback from

others on

...

is whether "Parent Taxon" and "circumscribed organisms" are *both* intrinsic properties of "taxon concept", or if

"taxon concept"

...

is effectively equivalent to "circumscription", relegating "parent taxon" as a property of Classification, separate from

"Taxon Concept".

But "Parent Taxon" is a circumscription itself. Its children are circumscriptions of circumscriptions. A specimen is the ultimate circumscription.

///ark