Morphology is not always useful for diagnosis, and that’s ok: Species hypotheses should not be bound to a class of data. Reply to Brown and Gibbons (S Afr J Sci. 2022;118(9/10), Art. #12590)

2022/09/26 by Jonathan W. Lawley, Edgar Gamero‐Mora, Maximiliano M. Maronna +5 · 2 citations
Environmental Science · #Species Distribution and Climate Change #Animal Ecology and Behavior Studies #Wildlife Ecology and Conservation

paper · pdf · doi:10.17159/sajs.2022/14495

openalex publication_date 2022/09/26 · openalex created_date 2022/09/27 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31

Abstract

12590) on our recently published paper on systematics of the moon jellyfish genus Aurelia (Lawley et al. PeerJ 2021;9, e11954)). We emphasise that we are not advocating for the routine use of molecular data alone in taxonomic diagnoses, rather that it is a valid approach in cases where, after detailed analyses, morphological features are shown to be unreliable.

Citations

• How to describe a cryptic species? Practical challenges of molecular taxonomy
• Molecular Evidence for Cryptic Species of Aurelia aurita (Cnidaria, Scyphozoa)
• Macro-morphological variation among cryptic species of the moon jellyfish, Aurelia (Cnidaria: Scyphozoa)

Cited by

• Species description [wikipedia]
• Taxonomy (biology) [wikipedia]

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