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The evolutionary reality of species and higher taxa in plants: a survey of post‐modern opinion and evidence
Author(s) -
Barraclough Timothy G.,
Humphreys Aelys M.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
new phytologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.742
H-Index - 244
eISSN - 1469-8137
pISSN - 0028-646X
DOI - 10.1111/nph.13232
Subject(s) - taxon , biology , biodiversity , ecology , evolutionary biology , evolutionary ecology , plant evolution , biochemistry , genome , gene , host (biology)
Summary Species are normally considered to be the fundamental unit for understanding the evolution of biodiversity. Yet, in a survey of botanists in 1940, twice as many felt that plant genera were more natural units than plant species. Revisiting the survey, we found more people now regarded species as a more evolutionarily real unit, but a sizeable number still felt that genera were more evolutionarily real than species. Definitions of ‘evolutionarily real’ split into those based on shared evolutionary history and those based on shared evolutionary fate via ongoing evolutionary processes. We discuss recent work testing for shared evolutionary fate at the species and higher levels and present preliminary evidence for evolutionarily significant higher taxa in plants.ContentsSummary 291 I. Introduction 291 II. A survey of post‐modern opinion 292 III. Empirical evidence for species and higher taxa with shared evolutionary fate 293 IV. Conclusions 295Acknowledgements 295References 296