Species are an attempt to label a continuous phenomenon with discontinuous labels. Sometimes the cutoff point is the ability to produce fertile offspring, but that doesn't work all the time. It's always going to be very subjective.
Well put. I kept thinking this as I read the article. The notion of species is useless in understanding the phenomena the article discusses.
I'd go so far as to say that the word "species" causes significant confusion even among scientists, since it so biases the way one thinks about collections of similar organisms.
My hunch is that the "species bias" comes from the heavy influence of religious views of "creation" rather than "emergence" in Western culture.
