Tim Barraclough was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, and was educated at Bradford Grammar School, and the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. His DPhil research used large-scale phylogenetic data to look for correlates of diversification in birds and flowering plants. Moving to Imperial College London's Silwood Park campus in 1996, he worked first on the molecular systematics of tiger beetles, before establishing his own group with a Royal Society University Research Fellowship followed by a Lectureship in 2003. He has worked on a wide range of different animals, fungi, plants and bacteria and used a range of different methods ranging from theory and computation, through field work and systematics, to studying evolution 'live' in the laboratory. In 2012, he was awarded the Bicentenary Medal of the Linnean Society for a scientist under the age of 40.

In this volume, the author defends the view that species form a real unit in rerum natura, serving as a unit central to understanding the origin and dynamics of biological diversity. Barraclough argues that individuals within the same species interact and evolve interdependently, while individuals belonging to distinct species evolve independently. And he maintains that we observe this phenomenon in the discrete clustering of genetic and phenotypic variation . . . The Evolutionary Biology of Species is aimed at graduate-level students and researchers. The work is, however, clearly written, and the author provides a glossary of important nomenclature. More generally, individuals with an interest in systematics will find much in Barraclough's work, worthy of interest and critical thought.

• 1: Introduction 2: What are species? 3: The evidence for species - phenotypic and genetic clustering 4: Why are there species? - arenas of recombination and selection 5: What causes speciation? 6: Species and speciation without sex 7: Species boundaries and contemporary evolution 8: Species interactions and contemporary evolution 9: Predicting evolution in diverse communities 10: How does species richness accumulate over time? 11: Conclusions