The species concept “problem” has pervaded for many years and will not be resolved anytime soon, if ever. The problem, of course, being that no two scientists will agree on universal definitions of what the darn things are! Taxonomist are exceptional argumentative and someone will undoubtedly disagree with everything in this article!

Species concepts were first defined based on morphological traits. Linneaus, being limited by technology at the time, used the “eyeball method” to study things – meaning he looked at them and described what he saw. This is formalized as the morphological or typological species concept (Cracraft, 2000; Mayr, 1996), and many biologists are just fine with this. It looks different, ergo it is and any distinguishing characters that could be observed, counted and measured were enough to define new species.