The Importance of Biosemiotics for Morphology
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The Importance of Biosemiotics for Morphology Joachim Schult 1 & Onno Preik 2 & Stefan Kirschner 1 Received: 15 May 2020 / Accepted: 17 November 2020/ # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Morphology and its relevance for systematics is a promising field for the application of biosemiotic principles in scientific practice. Genital coupling in spiders involves very complex interactions between the male and female genital structures. As exemplified by two spider species, Nephila clavipes and Nephila pilipes ssp. fenestrata, from a biosemiotic point of view the microstructures of the male bulb’s embolus and the corresponding female epigynal and vulval parts form the morphological zone of an intraspecific communication and signinterpreting process that is one of the prerequisites for sperm transfer. Hence these morphological elements are of high taxonomic value, as they play an essential role in mating and fertilization and consequently in establishing and preserving a reproductive community. Morphology clearly benefits from a biosemiotic approach, as biosemiotics helps to sort out species-specific morphological characters and to avoid problematic typological interpretations. Keywords Biosemiotics . Character interpretation . Morphological characters . Nephila
clavipes . Nephila pilipes ssp. fenestrata . Recognition window . Reductionism . Species problem
* Joachim Schult joachim.schult@uni–hamburg.de Onno Preik [email protected] Stefan Kirschner [email protected]
1
Department of Biology, History of Science Research Unit, University of Hamburg, Bundesstr. 55, 20146 Hamburg, Germany
2
Department of Biology, Behavioural Biology Research Unit, University of Hamburg, Martin-Luther-King Platz 3, 20146 Hamburg, Germany
Schult J. et al.
Introduction In his preface to Barbieri’s (2003) work, “The organic codes”, the evolutionary biologist Ghiselin (2003: ix) pointed out: “Most scientific publications deal with problems that can be explained in a straightforward manner and with solutions that can be evaluated as a matter of routine. But scientific progress often occurs when somebody tries to reformulate the problem, or to suggest a different kind of solution. When that happens, it may be necessary to dwell as much upon the questions as upon the answers, and to show how a novel approach might give further significant results.” (italics ours) Taking this citation as an inspiration, the purpose of our paper is to show by an example from spider taxonomy that biosemiotics as a novel approach has the potential to overcome widespread and straightforward, but insufficient explanations concerning the function of specific morphological structures in spider genital organs. In this way biosemiotics simultaneously contributes to restrengthening morphology, which has experienced a severe decline starting in the twentieth century. Biosemiotics, which studies the production and interpretation of signs and codes in living systems (Favareau 2010; Kull 2016), is essentially derived from Peircean semioti
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