I think truly rare species do indeed exist.  Don't know why, but they do.
However, I do agree that many species thought to be rare have and will be
found not to be so.  The short-tailed snake of Florida is a good example of
a rare species.  Always been extremely rare in collections and despite the
huge development and human population growth in Florida, no one has ever
found an aggregation of these snakes, still only one here, one there 10
years later.  How they get together to breed is a good question, but it
does obviously happen.  This appears to be a real rare species.
 
Rare in collections is usually a stupid assumption (no offense, Ken).  One
example comes to mind.  The common toad in Pakistan is Bufo something
another.  A fellow at the British Museum was looking into using the toxin
from a toad's parotid glands to examine phylogeny so he asked us to bring
him some.  When we mentioned Bufo something another he said, "Oh, don't
take any of those from the wild.  They must be rare.  We only have two in
our collections."  The darned thing was so common, you could hardly keep
from stepping on them.  And this provincial attitude is not restricted to
foreign species.  Very common American species are often poorly represented
in museum collections for one reason or another and perhaps thought to be
rare by some sedentary enthusiasts and professionals.
 
So, species should only be referred to as rare in the wild or in
collections when very good collecting has been done. I agree that the terms
are used too frequently, but if collecting really hasn't been done, then
the species can rightfully be termed as rare in collections (Ken makes a
good point) and it may actually be naturally rare as well.
 
And the word extinct bothers me greatly, but we'll save that for later.
 
Kurt
 
At 11:55 PM 5/21/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Hi All,
>
>I much prefer the phrase "rare in collections". I'm beginning to feel that
>"rare", is being highly over-used these days, and tend to ignore it to some
>extent, but especially when used as a selling or valuation point. Don't know
>if that's cynicism creeping up on me, or experience soaking in...
>
>Ken Zentzis
>Wichita, Kansas
>