Cryptic species as a window into the paradigm shift of the species concept - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue Molecular Ecology Année : 2018

Cryptic species as a window into the paradigm shift of the species concept

Résumé

The species concept is the cornerstone of biodiversity science, and any paradigm shift in the delimitation of species affects many research fields. Many biologists now are embracing a new “species” paradigm as separately evolving populations using different delimitation criteria. Individual criteria can emerge during different periods of speciation; some may never evolve. As such, a paradigm shift in the species concept relates to this inherent heterogeneity in the speciation process and species category which is fundamentally overlooked in biodiversity research. Cryptic species fall within this paradigm shift: they are continuously being reported from diverse animal phyla but are poorly considered in current tests of ecological and evolutionary theory. The aim of this review is to integrate cryptic species in biodiversity science. In the first section, we address that the absence of morpho- logical diversification is an evolutionary phenomenon, a “process” counterpart to the long studied mechanisms of morphological diversification. In the next section regarding taxonomy, we show that molecular delimitation of cryptic species is heavily biased towards dis- tance-based methods. We also stress the importance of formally naming of cryptic species for better integration into research fields that use species as units of analysis. Finally, we show that incorporating cryptic species leads to novel insights regarding biodiversity pat- terns and processes, including large-scale biodiversity assessments, geographic variation in species distribution and species coexistence. It is time for incorporating multicriteria spe- cies approaches aiming to understand speciation across space and taxa, thus allowing inte- gration into biodiversity conservation while accommodating for species uncertainty.

Dates et versions

hal-01864254 , version 1 (29-08-2018)

Identifiants

Citer

Cene Fišer, Christopher Robinson, Florian Malard. Cryptic species as a window into the paradigm shift of the species concept. Molecular Ecology, 2018, 27 (3), pp.613 - 635. ⟨10.1111/mec.14486⟩. ⟨hal-01864254⟩
50 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More