Journal international de l'évolution

The Tangled Evolution of Italian Sparrow

Domenico Fulgione and Daniela Rippa

When the then 37 years old Dobzhansky wrote these words the problem of identifying a universally acceptable concept of species already had a long and respectable history. Unfortunately, despite much effort and painstaking attempts by eminent scholars such as Ernst Mayr and Massimo Pigliucci, the definition of species still defies a unitary concept today.