Nature is endlessly inventive! No matter how we try to define the words "species" and "genus", they are just words. Nature is wordless and unconstrained by the limitations of human language. The distinctions are manmade, but they do reflect real differences in nature, and that is why we retain the words. From one viewpoint, "A species is what a taxonomist says it is." A taxonomist studying birds, butterflies, cones, or cypraeids will generally make finer distinctions than a taxonomist studying something unpleasant. A botanist who liked hawthorns (genus Crataegus) named tens of species in North America. Hawthorns hybridize readily, and their leaves can have very diverse shapes on a single tree. Another botanist sent him four leaves without explaining that all four came from one plant. They were each given separate, new species names. The botanists still haven't straightened up the mess, because there really is a large number of hawthorn species and hybrids. The point to this little tale is that "A species is what a taxonomist says it is" as long as everyone else agrees with that taxonomist later. When we read about so many species of hawthorn or cypraeids from one place, naturally we wonder whether the taxonomist has not allowed his enthusiasm to color his decisions. But unless we look at the organisms ourselves, we cannot tell for sure. A person's reputation is based on these decisions, so most taxonomists manage somehow to keep their enthusiasm in check. Someone who tends to make fine distinctions is called a "splitter"; a person who has the opposite tendency is called a "lumper". These are both honorable terms; most people don't go too far in either direction. And, you know, sometimes the extreme lumpers or the extreme splitters are RIGHT. Andrew K. Rindsberg Geological Survey of Alabama