Talk:Lycodon cardamomensis

Endemism

 * Greetings. I noticed this edit of yours, and I believe your reasoning is incorrect. Endemism is the state of being unique to geographic location. The location in question is a well-defined one, encompassing south-west Cambodia and south-east Thailand. The fact that it does not align with national boundaries (which have no ecological significance, after all) does not change this fact; L. cardamomensis is still unique to the region, and hence endemic. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:31, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
 * It is endemic to the region of Cardamon Mountains, but not to Cambodia and Thailand separately. Endemism can be defined for different geographic entities (some biologically more meaningful than others), but a species cannot be endemic to two entities defined at the same level of organisation. That's at least how I understand the concept! Micromesistius (talk) 19:27, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, conceptually you are correct, but the nature of species distribution means that regions of endemism will rarely coincide either with each other, or with political boundaries. So it seems that if we were to apply your logic, the only species listed as "endemic" anywhere would be those whose range just happens to fall entirely within a political boundary, which seems like a flawed categorization scheme to me, especially given that endemism is usually defined vis-a-vis small, threatened habitats. Vanamonde93 (talk) 19:37, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I partially agree, but that's how "Endemic of Country_X" are defined. In any case, some countries have lots of endemics, and even for Cambodia there are 12 endemics listed. There is also the "Endemic fauna by region" categorization, but that system looks less popular. I'm a friend of categories, and all in favor of establishing new endemics categories, if they are likely to get reasonably populated. Micromesistius (talk) 20:25, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Okay. The trouble is that whatever geographical categorization we devise, it's going to leave some out if we want each species to belong to only one. I'm not too hung up on it, though; let me think further on it. Vanamonde93 (talk) 21:06, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I think any biodiversity hotspot deserves a category for its endemics. Country categories are practical because they are unambiguous and data are easily available. Country level information is important in practice because management respects country borders. Micromesistius (talk) 18:52, 14 August 2015 (UTC)