Defining species

[Draco]

How is an individual species be defined?

This was a question that was given to the class as part of the work we are doing and there are very few sites that I found that can answer the question.
If you can give me some websites that could answer the question that would be helpful.

[Darby]

Try this, down toward the bottom -

http://faculty.fmcc.suny.edu/mcdarby/Ma ... tm#species

[MrMistery]

wikipedia is my favorite site
see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species
and here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_problem
As you can see, no simple answer to your question

[kotoreru]

Mmm, yup no simple answer. Some of the best minds have worked on this, my 'favourite' being Ernst Mayr - the noted evolutionary biologist.

What gets me is whether the thing making this answer so difficult to construct comes from the nature of the question or the limitations of language.

How dreadfully vague!

[Darby]

Wikipedia is an unreliable technical source - it may be useful in supplying reliable original sources, but the nature of the wiki makes the entries anonymous and unstable.

[MrMistery]

well, i wouldn't cite it as a source for my thesis paper. however when i need to find the answer to a question i almost always find what i need there. and generally, if i can't find it on wikipedia, i won't find it anywhere else on the internet.

[mith]

Someone built a wiki scanner. It's not just armchair trolls who are malicious. Wikipedia is edited by the government, the CIA, corporation etc.

[MrMistery]

lol
yeah probably.
however, i don't think the CIA would try to hide the biochemstry truths from anyone
about this
i was surprised to see that in my country college professors use wikipedia in their scientific research. i think that's going a little too far..

[Draco]

Another thing that I require is, How are species classified into the following Taxonomy groups:
Genus
Family
Order
Class
Phylum
Kingdom

Again any sites would be helpful.
Thaks for the information.

[MrMistery]

search wikipedia.org for any binomial name and on the right you will get it's complete taxonomy from kingdom down to species.

[Draco]

I would as wikipedia is a useful site but my teacher gets annoyed when people use only one site for a peice of work or one site more than the others.

Thanks for the information though.

[February Beetle]

Find it on wiki then look at their sources, follow the sources until you find a reliable one.