Ernst Mayr - Systematics and the Origin of Species (1942)

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A species consists of a group of populations which replace each other geographically or ecologically and of which the neighboring ones integrate or hybridise wherever they are in contact or which are potentially capable of doing so (with one or more of the populations) in those cases where contact is prevented by geographical or ecological barriers.

Ernst Mayr
Two forms or species are sympatric, if they occur together, that is if their areas of distribution overlap or coincide. Two forms (or species) are allopatric, if they do not occur together, that is if they exclude each other geographically. The term allopatric is primarily useful in denoting geographic representatives.

Ernst Mayr
A new species develops if a population which has become geographically isolated from its parental species acquires during this period of isolation characters which promote or guarantee reproductive isolation when the external barriers break down.

Ernst Mayr
It is quite true, as several recent authors have indicated, that Darwin's book was misnamed, because it is a book on evolutionary changes in general and the factors that control them (selectivity, and so forth), but not a treatise on the origin of species.

Ernst Mayr
It may not be exaggeration if I say that there are probably as many species concepts as there are thinking systematists and students of speciation.

Ernst Mayr