Authors
- UWE FRITZMuseum of Zoology, Senckenberg Dresden, A. B. Meyer Building, 01109 Dresden, Germany.
- PETER HAVAŠTitogradská 18, 040 23 Košice, Slovak Republic.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3835.2.10Keywords:
Reptilia, turtlesAbstract
Species delimitation is a central issue in all fields of biology, and it is closely tied to the species concept employed. Thousands of pages have been filled with debates about competing species concepts; for instance, Coyne & Orr (2004) counted no less than 25 distinct species concepts. Among these are several phylogenetic species concepts. The paper by Martin et al. (2013) on box turtles is one of many recent publications that raise formerly recognized subspecies to the species level, based on molecular genetic evidence and favouring implicitly or explicitly a phylogenetic species concept as the theoretical foundation. We wish to underline that there is growing concern with respect to this approach (see Zachos et al. 2013 for mammals), and this concern guided our recent taxonomic update for turtles (Fritz & Havaš 2013). Without intending to enter the debate on species concepts, we will briefly explain why we are not convinced by the conclusions of Martin et al. (2013).
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