Do we need a better concept than species?

I wouldn't go that far. It is true that categories are usually artificial, but categories are nonetheless useful in organizing data. One simply has to keep in mind the limitations of one's categorization.

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While we're on the subject, are there cases of 'observed speciation' (i.e. in populations living at the present) which would satisfy the criteria of most evolutionary biologists?

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Yes.Also.

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I just think that by pointing out examples of observed speciation that are not convincing to the layperson (or even to the scientists), we're providing ammunition to those looking for any possible holes in the ToE - hence my OP.

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Well, considering that the creationists consider all big cats as one cat "kind" that hyper-micro-evolved from an original pair of cats on Noah's ark, no speciation event is going to convince them, no matter how definite the concept of species is.What they are demanding is the observation of splitting into different orders (or maybe even classes). Unfortunately, their attention spans are so short that they are not willing to hang around and wait for several tens of millions of years.Edited to fix the quote.This message has been edited by Chiroptera, 30-Jul-2005 05:22 PM

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I'll try to ignore him in future.

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Or just use his posts as an excuse to explain basic science to the lurkers. That was basically what I was doing yesterday on another thread. Randman is a lost cause, but there may be people reading the threads who may be interested in what the actual science has to say.

Heh heh. I lost count of how many post I've written today and then deleted, for the same reason. Close to a dozen, I reckon.