Species Concepts, Species Boundaries and Species Identification: A View from the Tropics

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Abstract
The species has been treated as a fundamental unit in biology (Hull, 1977) and, more recently, in biodiversity conservation (Sites and Crandall, 1997). Almost all studies in biology, whether at the level of molecules, cells, individuals or populations, are typically referenced to the level of the species. In the field of conservation biology, assessments of biodiversity are made at the level of the species: typical criteria include species richness, numbers of endemic species, and the number or presence of endangered species in given areas (Myers et al. 2000). The accurate identification of species is crucial both to research in all areas of biology and to biodiversity conservation. It is therefore surprising that, in the field of systematics, species are currently used mostly as terminal taxa in the reconstruction of phylogenetic trees, whereas the methods by which they are delimited and identified receive scant attention (Wiens and Penkrot, 2002).

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