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4 - Essentialism and Typology

from Part II - Systematics: Exposing Myths

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2020

David M. Williams  and
Malte C. Ebach
David M. Williams
Affiliation:
Natural History Museum, London
Malte C. Ebach
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, Sydney
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Summary

Part of the problem of species delineation is the fact that morphology, as an approach for delimiting species, has some limits. Traditional morphology-based taxonomy only discriminates what Cain (1954) called ‘morphospecies’, i.e. species exclusively established on morphology … Traditional morphology-based taxonomy is not the study of life’s diversity per se, but rather the study of one of its multiple facets, morphological diversity, which I refer to as ‘morphodiversity’.

Type
Chapter
Information
Cladistics
A Guide to Biological Classification
 , pp. 108 - 118
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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Further Reading

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