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Response to Vignieri et al. (2006) : Should hypothesis testing or selective post hoc interpretation of results guide the allocation of conservation effort?

In their response to Ramey et al. (2005), Vignieri et al. (2006, this issue; hereafter VEA) claim that they are concerned about erroneous application and interpretation of morphometric, genetic and ecological data. We share this concern, which is why we used a consistent hypothesis-testing approach to test the taxonomic validity of Preble’s meadow jumping mouse Zapus hudsonius preblei as a subspecies and its uniqueness as a distinct population segment. We used critical tests that were set in advance of data collection to avoid subjective post hoc interpretation of results. We also used multiple lines of evidence for our tests of uniqueness to avoid erroneous conclusions (Ramey et al., 2005). We do not agree with VEA that four lines of corroborating evidence can be considered to be ‘narrow in scope’. Contrary to their stated goals, VEA did not accurately portray our goals, methods, results or conclusions. They selectively cited information and relied on speculation and post hoc interpretation of results to support their claims that Z. h. preblei is a distinct subspecies and an ‘evolutionary distinct mouse’. We contend that the approach used by VEA was less than objective and, if widely applied, could result in the misallocation of conservation effort to many non-distinct local populations.