Reflections on “Les problémes de l’espéce dans le Régne animal” directed by Charles Bocquet, Jean Génermont and Maxime Lamotte.

Abstract

Reflections on “Les problémes de l’espéce dans le Régne animal” directed by Charles Bocquet, Jean Génermont and Maxime Lamotte.

It is a pleasure to comment a very nice French publication on the species problem in the animal Kingdom. Two volumes appeared and a third is heralded. The contain seventeen papers, each on a different group. Most are excellent an none is bad. The main conclusion are: the frequence of cryptic species, the difficulties of application of the biological species concept between allopatric populations, the probability of quite an array of speciation mechanisms, although the allopatric model of Mayr still apppears to be by far the most common. As a corollary, it can be seen that the biological species concept is indeed non-operational as claimed by Sikal and Crovello (1970). However, it does no matter. Systematists are not free to disregard the reality, pretexting its forbidding complexity. So much the worse for them, buy they have to face the challenge.