Problems of systematics: Part 1. a critical evaluation of the «species problem» and its significance in evolutionary biology

Abstract

The author discusses the significance of the «species problem» in the context of evolutionary biology and of systematics. He concludes that, contrary to current tendencies, a strongly nominalistic concept of the «species» is the only tenable one, that species cannot be conceived as individuals and that the species concept is irrelevant for evolutionary biology. Moreover a careful analysis of the species concept falsifies some of the basic tenets of Hennigian and of transformed cladism. © 1992, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.