%0 Journal Article
%T Integrative Insect Species Delimitation Requires Explicit Reconciliation of Morphological Evidence, Molecular Signals, and Biological Meaning
%A Youssef Hariri
%A Hassan Nasser
%A Fatima Zahra
%J Entomological Research Letters
%@ 3108-639X
%D 2021
%V 1
%N 2
%R 10.51847/vWRwOTIRMd
%P 30-40
%X Species delimitation in insects increasingly combines morphology, DNA barcodes, multilocus phylogenies, genomic partitions, geography, ecology and reproductive information. Yet integration is often treated as accumulation: concordant signals are counted as support, whereas discordant signals are framed as problems to be resolved by choosing a preferred dataset. This conceptual analysis argues that the principal difficulty is instead inferential. Different evidence classes record different biological processes and operate at different temporal, spatial and organismal scales; consequently, a molecular cluster, morphological diagnosis or ecological association cannot be converted directly into a species conclusion without an intervening interpretation step. Drawing on recent insect-systematics and delimitation literature, the article distinguishes observation from process inference and taxonomic decision, evaluates the complementary limits of morphological, molecular, ecological and reproductive evidence, and identifies recurrent causes of discordance including population structure, model misspecification, introgression, hybridization, symbiont effects, sex-biased dispersal, geographic history and technical error. The article then develops a proposed reconciliation architecture in which evidence is evaluated for biological meaning, independence, boundary conditions and alternative explanations before a taxonomic state is assigned. The approach does not prescribe universal weights, diagnostic thresholds or a single species concept. Its intended contribution is a transparent logic for deciding when concordant evidence is genuinely reinforcing, when discordance is biologically informative, and when unresolved cases should remain open to reassessment.
%U https://esvpub.com/article/integrative-insect-species-delimitation-requires-explicit-reconciliation-of-morphological-evidence-ih69yfnxqoexjlt