The Earth stands on the brink of its sixth mass extinction and the fault is ours

[Glenzig]

Originally Posted by Skydash [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Specere = to look; championed by Aristotle as a hierarchical system of classification for similar looking plants and animals based on Plato's idea of the immutable essence of things.

Leading eventually to the Binomial nomenclature defined as,


Thus, if biologists are to use binomial nomenclature, and if they are to carry out the process of naming an organism in an objective manner, they need a clear definition of species. But attempts to say which populations should be treated as species have always been, and continue to be, problematic. In the long quest to establish valid classifications, a multiplicity of definitions for species have been proposed. This hunt for definitions is of such long standing, that it is known in biological circles as "the species problem."

And as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck realized, hybridization was rampant in both animals and plants,


I wanted to here Luminari's theory of species Glenzig... and now you've ruined it.

So what is a species exactly then? Is there actually such a thing?