Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK; IST Austria, AM1 Campus, Klosterneuburg, Austria.
School of Life Sciences, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK.
Curr Biol. 2021 May 10;31(9):R428-R429. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.03.060.
Humans conceptualize the diversity of life by classifying individuals into types we call 'species'. The species we recognize influence political and financial decisions and guide our understanding of how units of diversity evolve and interact. Although the idea of species may seem intuitive, a debate about the best way to define them has raged even before Darwin. So much energy has been devoted to the so-called 'species problem' that no amount of discourse will ever likely solve it. Dozens of species concepts are currently recognized, but we lack a concrete understanding of how much researchers actually disagree and the factors that cause them to think differently. To address this, we used a survey to quantify the species problem for the first time. The results indicate that the disagreement is extensive: two randomly chosen respondents will most likely disagree on the nature of species. The probability of disagreement is not predicted by researcher experience or broad study system, but tended to be lower among researchers with similar focus, training and who study the same organism. Should we see this diversity of perspectives as a problem? We argue that we should not.
人类通过将个体分类为我们称之为“物种”的类型来认识生命的多样性。我们所认识的物种影响着政治和金融决策，并指导我们理解多样性的单位如何进化和相互作用。尽管物种的概念似乎是直观的，但早在达尔文之前，关于定义它们的最佳方法的争论就已经激烈了。人们投入了如此多的精力来解决所谓的“物种问题”，以至于再多的讨论也不可能解决它。目前已经承认了数十种物种概念，但我们缺乏对研究人员实际分歧程度以及导致他们产生分歧的因素的具体理解。为了解决这个问题，我们首次使用调查来量化物种问题。结果表明，分歧是广泛存在的：两个随机选择的受访者很可能对物种的本质存在分歧。意见分歧的概率不受研究人员经验或广泛研究系统的预测，但在具有相似关注点、培训和研究同一生物的研究人员中，分歧的概率往往较低。我们是否应该将这种观点的多样性视为一个问题？我们认为不应该。
