I have some exciting news to share: Today is the launch day for Accumulating Glitches, a blog I am co-authoring with Sedeer el-Showk! Accumulating Glitches is one of many new science blogs launching this week at Scitable (by Nature Education), and I encourage you to check them out. (A summary of them can be found here).
In celebration of today's launch, I am sharing part of Sedeer's debut post, Do Species Really Exist?
Despite these difficulties, we've been classifying organisms throughout the history of human thought, from Aristotle's division between plants and animals to modern scientific nomenclature. The modern classification system is based on grouping organisms into units called 'species'; species, in turn, group together into a larger units called genus, family, order, and so on through the nested hierarchy of life. What make a species, though? Why should a particular group of organisms be thought of as a unit and given a distinct name? How do we decide which organisms make up a species?
To ponder these questions, read the rest of Sedeer's article!
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