Category: Species concepts
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Species are what you want them to be
What is a species? I don’t know. And honestly, I don’t really care too much. Species is just a semantic label I place on a set of individuals related to a phylogeny. There tends to be a correlation in genetic variants between these creatures. For sexual organisms, which does not include all organisms, it generally…
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The utility and reality of species
Of all the taxonomic ranks species is the most clear, distinct, and concrete. More practically, it is the level which most naturally falls out of the patterns of life’s tree. Or does it? If the term “species concept” does not ring a b…
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Species, not arbitrary, but not clear & distinct
John Hawks and Jerry Coyne are mooting the ‘species concepts’ debate, with particular focus on recent human origins (specifically, the relationship of modern humans to Neandertals and Denisovans). Coyne, who coauthored the book Speciation …