Few topics in evolutionary biology have received as much scrutiny and debate as the nature of species and species concepts. This is partly because species are central to many fields of biology (but especially evolution, ecology, systematics, and conservation biology), and there does not appear to be a single concept that can satisfy the needs of these different disciplines [1]. A related issue is that the nature of species varies widely across the domains of life due to differences in mode of reproduction (sexual versus asexual), life cycle, generation time, mating system, vagility, genome architecture, geographic range size, and a host of other features [2]. Species concepts that can accommodate this natural diversity [3,4] offer little guidance regarding how to delimit species, study their origins and evolution, or predict their evolutionary fate. As a consequence, users of species concepts typically choose the concept that suits their specific requirements, often with the recognition that their favored concept has known flaws, lacks universality or both.

中文翻译：

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虽然既不普遍适用，也不实用，但生物物种概念继续为研究物种和物种形成提供令人信服的框架

进化生物学中很少有主题像物种的性质和物种概念一样受到如此多的审查和争论。这部分是因为物种是许多生物学领域（尤其是进化、生态学、系统学和保护生物学）的核心，并且似乎没有一个概念可以满足这些不同学科的需求。1]。一个相关的问题是，由于繁殖方式（有性与无性）、生命周期、世代时间、交配系统、变异性、基因组结构、地理范围大小和宿主的差异，物种的性质在生命的各个领域存在很大差异。其他功能 [2]。可以适应这种自然多样性的物种概念 [3、4] 在如何划定物种、研究它们的起源和进化或预测它们的进化命运方面提供很少的指导。因此，物种概念的用户通常会选择适合其特定要求的概念，通常会认识到他们偏爱的概念存在已知缺陷、缺乏普遍性或两者兼而有之。