Mayr's biological species concept




Most modern textbooks make use of Ernst Mayr's 1942 definition, known as the Biological Species Concept as a basis for further discussion on the definition of species. It is also called a reproductive or isolation concept. This defines a species as

groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations, which are reproductively isolated from other such groups.

It has been argued that this definition is a natural consequence of the effect of sexual reproduction on the dynamics of natural selection. Mayr's use of the adjective "potentially" has been a point of debate; some interpretations exclude unusual or artificial matings that occur only in captivity, or that involve animals capable of mating but that do not normally do so in the wild.

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