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Immunology and Infectious Disease
Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology: Faculty and Staff Publications
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Species: Turning A Conundrum Into A Research Program, Daniel R. Brooks, Deborah A. Mclennan, E. C. Bernard
Species: Turning A Conundrum Into A Research Program, Daniel R. Brooks, Deborah A. Mclennan, E. C. Bernard
Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology: Faculty and Staff Publications
The most appropriate ontological basis for understanding the role of species in evolutionary biology is the Evolutionary Species Concept. The ESC is not an operational concept, but one version of the Phylogenetic Species Concept is. Linking the ontology of species with the epistemological basis of actual biological studies requires that we specify both a discovery mode for identifying collections of organisms that we believe are evolutionary species, and a series of evaluation criteria for assessing those entities we have discovered. Simply naming a collection of specimens, no matter how strong one’s evolutionary beliefs, is not sufficient for declaring that evolutionary …