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The Evolutionary Biology of Species

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Review

“In this volume, the author defends the view that species form a real unit in rerum natura, serving as a unit central to understanding the origin and dynamics of biological diversity. Barraclough argues that individuals within the same species interact and evolve interdependently, while individuals
belonging to distinct species evolve independently. And he maintains that we observe this phenomenon in the discrete clustering of genetic and phenotypic variation . . . The Evolutionary Biology of Species is aimed at graduate-level students and researchers. The work is, however, clearly written,
and the author provides a glossary of important nomenclature. More generally, individuals with an interest in systematics will find much in Barraclough’s work, worthy of interest and critical thought.” — Jeremy S. Kirkby, Albion College, Michigan, The Quarterly Review of Biology 

About the Author

Timothy G. Barraclough, Professor of Evolutionary Biology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, UK

Tim Barraclough was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, and was educated at Bradford Grammar School, and the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. His DPhil research used large-scale phylogenetic data to look for correlates of diversification in birds and flowering plants. Moving to Imperial College
London’s Silwood Park campus in 1996, he worked first on the molecular systematics of tiger beetles, before establishing his own group with a Royal Society University Research Fellowship followed by a Lectureship in 2003. He has worked on a wide range of different animals, fungi, plants and bacteria
and used a range of different methods ranging from theory and computation, through field work and systematics, to studying evolution ‘live’ in the laboratory. In 2012, he was awarded the Bicentenary Medal of the Linnean Society for a scientist under the age of 40.

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Description

‘Species’ are central to understanding the origin and dynamics of biological diversity; explaining why lineages split into multiple distinct species is one of the main goals of evolutionary biology. However the existence of species is often taken for granted, and precisely what is meant by
species and whether they really exist as a pattern of nature has rarely been modelled or critically tested. This novel book presents a synthetic overview of the evolutionary biology of species, describing what species are, how they form, the consequences of species boundaries and diversity for
evolution, and patterns of species accumulation over time. The central thesis is that species represent more than just a unit of taxonomy; they are a model of how diversity is structured as well as how groups of related organisms evolve. The author adopts an intentionally broad approach, stepping
back from the details to consider what species constitute, both theoretically and empirically, and how we detect them, drawing on a wealth of examples from microbes to multicellular organisms

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