BRAINCAKEMorphological Concept of Species
The morphological species concept defines a species as a group of organisms that share the same observable physical features: their morphology. These features include body shape, size, structure, colour and patterns such as the arrangement of veins in a leaf or the number of segments in an insect's leg.
When a new species is described, a preserved reference specimen, the type specimen, is kept in a museum. Other specimens are identified by comparing their features with the type specimen and its written description.
This was the concept used by Linnaeus, and it is still very widely used, because it has clear advantages:
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More in Classification
- Taxonomy
- Taxonomic Groups
- Binomial System
- Species
- Biological Concept of Species
- Other Species Models
- Limitations of Species Models
- Identifying a Species
All 19 lessons in Classification · All Edexcel AS-level Biology topics