The development of guidelines to assist in defining species limits

• This review describes the reasoning behind the “Guidelines for assessing species rank” developed by the Taxonomic Subcommittee of the British Ornithologists’ Union, and recently published in the Ibis. It sets out criteria for delimiting species taxa based primarily on the Evolutionary Species Concept and General Lineage Concept of Species (Mayden, 1997; de Queiroz, 1999), and secondarily on the Biological Species Concept, Recognition Species Concept and Phylogenetic Species Concept. Procedures and scenarios are canvassed for defining diagnosability and for determining species limits in situations of sympatry, parapatry, allopatry and hybrid zones. The role and significance of DNA sequence data is also addressed.

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