Abstract

Species serve as both the basic units of macroevolutionary studies and as the basic units of taxonomic classification. In this paper I argue that the taxa identified as species by the Phylogenetic Species Concept (Mishler and Brandon 1987) are the units of biological organization most causally relevant to the evolutionary process but that such units exist at multiple levels within the hierarchy of any phylogenetic lineage. The PSC gives us no way of identifying one of these levels as the privileged level on which taxonomic classifications can be based.