> Well, it's really incredible how much sibling species has been discovered in
> the last years, mainly from the most valuable families.
> I realise that several works have a hard investigation developed behing
> them, but it's at least a worrying matter when I look a lot of very similar
> species in a close range of distribution, whose only differences are a
> shadow, a point, a tooth... but there's no an animal description.
>
> What do you think?

There's a couple of potential factors.  Some people are extreme
splitters, some are extreme lumpers.  There's potential for conflict
of interest in excessive readiness to name forms and then sell them.
However, value spurs more collecting and sampling from new localities
that might have new forms.

In the not particularly popular families that I've worked on, there
seems to be a lot of overlooked taxa, but there are also usually an
ample supply of synonyms for others within the same groups.

--
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections
University of Alabama
"I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"

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