Here we review how evolving species concepts have been applied to understand yeast diversity. Initially, a phenotypic species concept was utilized taking into consideration morphological aspects of colonies and cells, and growth profiles. Later the biological species concept was added, which applied data from mating experiments. Biophysical measurements of DNA similarity between isolates were an early measure that became more broadly applied with the advent of sequencing technology, leading to a sequence-based species concept using comparisons of parts of the ribosomal DNA. At present phylogenetic species concepts that employ sequence data of rDNA and other genes are universally applied in fungal taxonomy, including yeasts, because various studies revealed a relatively good correlation between the biological species concept and sequence divergence. The application of genome information is becoming increasingly common, and we strongly recommend the use of complete, rather than draft genomes to improve our understanding of species and their genome and genetic dynamics. Complete genomes allow in-depth comparisons on the evolvability of genomes and, consequently, of the species to which they belong. Hybridization seems a relatively common phenomenon and has been observed in all major fungal lineages that contain yeasts. Note that hybrids may greatly differ in their post-hybridization development. Future in-depth studies, initially using some model species or complexes may shift the traditional species concept as isolated clusters of genetically compatible isolates to a cohesive speciation network in which such clusters are interconnected by genetic processes, such as hybridization.

在这里，我们回顾了如何应用进化物种概念来理解酵母多样性。最初，表型物种概念被用于考虑菌落和细胞的形态学方面以及生长概况。后来添加了生物物种概念，该概念应用了交配实验的数据。分离株之间 DNA 相似性的生物物理测量是一种早期测量方法，随着测序技术的出现得到更广泛的应用，导致使用核糖体 DNA 部分比较的基于序列的物种概念。目前，利用rDNA和其他基因序列数据的系统发育物种概念普遍应用于包括酵母在内的真菌分类学中，因为各种研究表明生物物种概念与序列分歧之间存在较好的相关性。基因组信息的应用正变得越来越普遍，我们强烈建议使用完整的基因组，而不是草稿基因组，以提高我们对物种及其基因组和遗传动态的理解。完整的基因组允许对基因组的可进化性进行深入比较，从而对它们所属的物种进行深入比较。杂交似乎是一种相对普遍的现象，并且已在所有含有酵母的主要真菌谱系中观察到。请注意，杂交种的杂交后发育可能有很大差异。未来的深入研究，最初使用一些模型物种或复合物，可能会将传统的物种概念转变为遗传相容的分离株的孤立集群，转变为一个有凝聚力的物种形成网络，其中这些集群通过遗传过程相互连接，例如杂交。