Abstract
Species are widely regarded as fundamental elements of modern biology, but practitioners of species biology—those who delimit and study the attributes of species, and seek to understand the manner in which species originate—have yet to agree on what a species is. To state the case more accurately, there is less agreement now than there has been at times in the past. The controversy over species concepts takes many forms, from quiet certitude among members of some communities that theirs is the proper view, to open, vigorous, and sometimes rancorous debate. One modern viewpoint, often unstated however, is that the very word species is an outmoded vestige of another era, perhaps more fashionable than phlogiston, but only a word to be used loosely and vaguely, as a placeholder, with little risk of argument.
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Davis, J.I. (1996). Molecular Variation and the Delimitation of Species. In: Sobral, B.W.S. (eds) The Impact of Plant Molecular Genetics. Birkhäuser Boston. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-9855-8_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-9855-8_10
Publisher Name: Birkhäuser Boston
Print ISBN: 978-1-4615-9857-2
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