Question

Compare and contrast the Biological and Phylogenetic Species Concepts, discussing advantages and disadvantages of both.

Answer 1

Characters	Biological Species Concept	Phylogenetic species concept
Description	A species is a group of individuals whose members have the potential to interbreed with one another in nature to produce viable offspring but cannot interbreed with members of other species	Species defined on the basis of their evolution of lineages.
	Species can be distinguished as they cannot interbreed and produce fertile offspring	Species can be distinguished on the basis of differences in molecular characters.
Concept given by	Ernst Mayr in 1942	Joel Cracraft in 1982
Advantage	Reproductive isolation leads to evolutionary independence	Applicable to all those species having an evolutionary history
Disadvantage	Not applicable to asexually reproducing organisms as well as on the fossils.	If evolutionary history is not known, this concept cannot be applied.
Types	Not divided in any further types	Divided into three types: monophyletic, paraphyletic and polyphyletic
Example	Human population	Can be understood by cladogram (see the image)