Species might be only classes of convenience, or, like lines of latitude or contours, devices for mapping the world. Botanists are divided whether Illinois' Kankakee mallow, Iliamna remota , and Virginia's Iliamna corei , both rare, are distinct species. Against this, though, is the claim that there are specific forms of life maintained in their ecosystems over time. Evolutionary lines develop into diverse kinds of life, each with a more or less distinct integrity, a breeding population and a gene pool. In this view, the idea of species does not seem arbitrary or fictitious at all, but rather, as certain as anything we believe about the empirical world, even though at times taxonomists revise the theories and taxa with which they map these forms.
Species are like mountains and rivers, objectively there to be mapped.
Life is therefore something passing through the individual as much as something the individual possesses on its own. A species is a dynamic life form preserved in historical lines and has a vitality that persists genetically over millions of years, overleaping short-lived individuals. Further, reproduction can be looked on as the means by which a species defends itself. Both conserve botanical identity over time. An ethic about plants sees that the species is a bigger event than the individual.