Plant and animal species are information-processing entities of such complexity, integration, and adaptive competence that it may be scientifically fruitful to consider them intelligent. The possibility arises from the analogy between learning (in organisms) and evolution (in species), and from recent developments in evolutionary science, psychology and cognitive science. Species are now described as spatiotemporally localized individuals in an expanded hierarchy of biological entities. Intentional and cognitive abilities are now ascribed to animal, human, and artificial intelligence systems that process information adaptively, and that manifest problem-solving abilities. The structural and functional similarities between such systems and species are extensive, although they “are usually obscured by population-genetic metaphors that have nonetheless contributed much to our understanding of evolution.

In this target article, I use Sewall Wright's notion of the “adaptive landscape” to compare the performances of evolving species to those of intelligent organisms. With regard to their adaptive achievements and the kinds of processes by which they are achieved, biological species compare very favorably to intelligent animals by virtue of interactions between populations and their environments, between ontogeny and phylogeny, and between natural, interdemic, organic, and species selection. Addressing the question of whether species are intelligent could help to refine our ideas about species, evolution, and intelligence, and could open new lines of empirical and theoretical inquiry in many disciplines.

At present, European marine fish farming is based on sea bream and sea bass. A trend for diversification is sustained by the diversity of environmental conditions, by the availability of new production techniques such as recirculating systems, by an increase in rearing yields, by new market trends and by the possibilities to reduce risks of disease outbreak. Already reared fish species were chosen considering a limited number of criteria such as a high selling price and the availability of juveniles or breeders in the wild. This paper proposes a new selection method of fish species as candidates for aquaculture development on the French Atlantic, the Channel and the North Sea coasts. Using a three-phase procedure, candidates were selected among 20000 fish species. Final classification was carried out using a panel of 22 criteria, taking into account inquiries conducted in France with aquaculturists but also with the main actors of distribution and transformation channels and with consumers. Cod (Gadus morhua) was selected by the present work as the first candidate for aquaculture development on the western coasts of France. This work also highlights the high interest of Gadoids for aquaculture development in this area.