Abstract
FOR any profitable discussion of the origin of species it is essential to know what we mean when we use the word “species.” In Nature we find that a number of similar individuals, with similar habits, live in a certain area; such an aggregation of individuals may be termed a community. It is unfortunate that this word has sometimes been used for dissimilar and unrelated organisms that occur together—for example, the animals found on a muddy bottom in the North Sea, or the plants of a range of chalk hills-but I am satisfied that the word “association” is more appropriate to these, and that “community” is the right name for a number of similar individuals that live together and breed together. All this is preliminary to my definition of a species. A species is a community, or a number of related communities, the distinctive morphological characters of which are, in the opinion of a competent systematist, sufficiently definite to entitle it, or them, to a specific name. Groups of higher or lower rank than species can be defined in a similar way. Thus a sub-species is a community, or a number of related communities, the distinctive morphological characters of which are not, in the systematist's opinion, sufficiently definite to merit a specific name, but are sufficient to demand a sub-specific name. Similarly a genus is a species, or a number of related species, the distinctive morphological characters of which entitle it, or them, to generic rank.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
REGAN, C. Organic Evolution1. Nature 116, 398–401 (1925). https://doi.org/10.1038/116398a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/116398a0
This article is cited by
-
What are fungal species and how to delineate them?
Fungal Diversity (2021)
-
The Species Problem from the Modeler’s Point of View
Bulletin of Mathematical Biology (2019)