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Survey piece on species:

• Ereshefsky, M. (2010), Species, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

This Claridge piece is the point/counterpoint piece to Mishler's 2010 piece. The two are paired in Contemporary Debates in the Philosophy of Biology. Brent Mishler also had an earlier piece calling for the elimination of the species category.

• Mishler, B. (1999), Getting rid of species
• Claridge, M. (2010), Species are Uniquely Real Biological Entities (the counterpoint to Mishler's 2010 above piece)

The most recent and in my opinion, best defense of the Biological Species Concept is Jerry Coyne and Allen Orr's Speciation. The first chapter sets out there agenda and describes their view about species. The rest of the chapter are about their research on speciation (meaning the evolution of reproductive isolation mechanisms). The appendix consists of their criticisms of most other major definitions of species.

• Coyne, J. and Orr, H. A. (2004), Speciation (Chapter 1)
• Coyne, J. and Orr, H. A. (2004), Speciation (Appendix [scroll past the second half of chap 1])

Harrison (1998) refers to a version of a Phylogenetic Species Concept which he calls the Genealogical Species Concept which is based on gene tree concordance. This view was first developed in Baum and Shaw (1995). Less strict and so improved versions have been discussed a few times since, most recently in Baum (2009) and Velasco (2010).

• Baum, D. and Shaw, K. (1995), Genealogical Perspectives on the Species Problem
• Baum, D. (2009), Species as Ranked Taxa
• Velasco, J.D. (2010), Species, Genes, and the Tree of Life

A clear paper which sets out an agenda for phylogenetic species concepts is Baum and Donoghue (1995). They distinguish two different kinds of PSCs - those that are history based (like the gene concordance view) and those that are character based.

• Baum, D. and Donoghue, M. (1995), Choosing Among Alternative Phylogenetic Species Concepts

Velasco (2008) criticizes an argument from LaPorte (2005). LaPorte responds (indirectly by responding to a number of objections) in LaPorte (2009).

• LaPorte, J. (2005), Is There a Single, Objective Evolutionary Tree of Life?
• LaPorte, J. (2009), On Systematists' Single Objective Tree of Ancestors and Descendants

A number of papers argue that there are no prokaryotic species. The Lawrence and Retchless paper discuss how lineage separation works in prokaryotes while the Franklin piece is more philosophical and argues that Lateral Gene Transfer means there are no prokaryotic species.

• Lawrence, J.G. and Retchless, A.C. (2010), The myth of bacterial species and speciation
• Franklin, L.R. (2007), Bacteria, Sex, and Systematics