eprintid: 10109589 rev_number: 14 eprint_status: archive userid: 608 dir: disk0/10/10/95/89 datestamp: 2020-09-08 15:42:19 lastmod: 2021-11-08 00:23:50 status_changed: 2020-09-08 15:42:19 type: article metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Mallet, J title: Alternative views of biological species: reproductively isolated units or genotypic clusters? ispublished: pub divisions: UCL divisions: B02 divisions: C08 divisions: D09 divisions: F99 note: Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of China Science Publishing & Media Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract: Wang et al. in this journal argue that it may be time to abandon a classic idea about species, the biological species concept (BSC), given recent findings with genomic data on closely related taxa. Furthermore, they propose a set of tests on genetic or genomic data that might lead to acceptance or rejection of the biological species concept. Wang et al. are not the first to critique the biological species concept (BSC), which has survived an onslaught of attacks from many fronts. What is the biological species concept? And what is the new critique about? In this commentary, I briefly cover the history of ideas about biological species, then discuss current work that depends on rich, genome-scale sequence data, before attempting to resolve issues. date: 2020-08 date_type: published publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP) official_url: https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwaa116 oa_status: green full_text_type: pub language: eng primo: open primo_central: open_green verified: verified_manual elements_id: 1812310 doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwaa116 lyricists_name: Mallet, James lyricists_id: JMALL47 actors_name: Mallet, James actors_id: JMALL47 actors_role: owner full_text_status: public publication: National Science Review volume: 7 number: 8 pagerange: 1401-1407 citation: Mallet, J; (2020) Alternative views of biological species: reproductively isolated units or genotypic clusters? National Science Review , 7 (8) pp. 1401-1407. 10.1093/nsr/nwaa116 <https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr%2Fnwaa116>. Green open access document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10109589/1/mallet%202020%20on%20species%20edited.pdf