Speaker
Dr
Frank E. Zachos
(Natural History Museum Vienna)
Description
The question what a species is and which (if any) of the available species concepts is applicable to all of biodiversity (the “species problem”) is arguably one of the most contentious issues in biology. This problem, however, is far from being of purely academic interest. While the theoretical ramifications of the species problem are immense and crucial to many biological disciplines, the taxonomic status of threatened taxa and the designation or rejection of species status are of paramount importance in conservation biology and management as well. This has become increasingly clear over the last years which have seen a paradigmatic shift from the biological to versions of the phylogenetic species concept. In my keynote I will give a (necessarily very brief) overview of the species problem and recent developments in taxonomy, discussing also their potentially very worrying impact on conservation.
Primary author
Dr
Frank E. Zachos
(Natural History Museum Vienna)
