In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are often used, such as similarity of DNA, morphology or ecological niche. Presence of specific locally adapted traits may further subdivide species into subspecies.

The commonly used names for plant and animal taxa sometimes correspond to species: for example, "lion," "walrus," and "Camphor tree" – each refers to a species. In other cases common names do not: for example, "deer" refers to a family of 34 species, including Eld's Deer, Red Deer and Elk (Wapiti). The last two species were once considered a single species, illustrating how species boundaries may change with increased scientific knowledge.

Each species is placed within a single genus. This is a hypothesis that the species is more closely related to other species within its genus than to species of other genera. All species are given a binomial name consisting of the generic name and specific name (or specific epithet). For example, Boa constrictor, which is commonly called by its bionomial name, and is one of five species of the Boa genus.

A usable definition of the word "species" and reliable methods of identifying particular species are essential for stating and testing biological theories and for measuring biodiversity. Traditionally, multiple examples of a proposed species must be studied for unifying characters before it can be regarded as a species. Extinct species known only from fossils are generally difficult to assign precise taxonomic rankings.

Because of the difficulties with both defining and tallying the total numbers of different species in the world, it is estimated that there are anywhere between 2 and 100 million different species.

Biologists' working definition

A usable definition of the word "species" and reliable methods of identifying particular species is essential for stating and testing biological theories and for measuring biodiversity. Traditionally, multiple examples of a proposed species must be studied for unifying characters before it can be regarded as a species. It is generally difficult to give precise taxonomic rankings to extinct species known only from fossils.

Some biologists may view species as statistical phenomena, as opposed to the traditional idea, with a species seen as a class of organisms. In that case, a species is defined as a separately evolving lineage that forms a single gene pool. Although properties such as DNA-sequences and morphology are used to help separate closely related lineages, this definition has fuzzy boundaries. However, the exact definition of the term "species" is still controversial, particularly in prokaryotes, and this is called the species problem. Biologists have proposed a range of more precise definitions, but the definition used is a pragmatic choice that depends on the particularities of the species of concern.

Most textbooks follow Ernst Mayr's definition of a species as "groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations, which are reproductively isolated from other such groups". argues that there is evidence for it in some crustaceans and echinoderms. All definitions of the word "species" assume that an organism gets all its genes from one or two parents that are very like that organism, but horizontal gene transfer makes that assumption false.

Definitions of species

The question of how best to define "species" is one that has occupied biologists for centuries, and the debate itself has become known as the species problem. Darwin wrote in chapter II of On the Origin of Species: :No one definition has satisfied all naturalists; yet every naturalist knows vaguely what he means when he speaks of a species. Generally the term includes the unknown element of a distinct act of creation. But later, in The Descent of Man, when addressing "The question whether mankind consists of one or several species", Darwin revised his opinion to say: :it is a hopeless endeavour to decide this point on sound grounds, until some definition of the term "species" is generally accepted; and the definition must not include an element that cannot possibly be ascertained, such as an act of creation. The modern theory of evolution depends on a fundamental redefinition of "species". Prior to Darwin, naturalists viewed species as ideal or general types, which could be exemplified by an ideal specimen bearing all the traits general to the species. Darwin's theories shifted attention from uniformity to variation and from the general to the particular. According to intellectual historian Louis Menand, :Once our attention is redirected to the individual, we need another way of making generalizations. We are no longer interested in the conformity of an individual to an ideal type; we are now interested in the relation of an individual to the other individuals with which it interacts. To generalize about groups of interacting individuals, we need to drop the language of types and essences, which is prescriptive (telling us what finches should be), and adopt the language of statistics and probability, which is predictive (telling us what the average finch, under specified conditions, is likely to do). Relations will be more important than categories; functions, which are variable, will be more important than purposes; transitions will be more important than boundaries; sequences will be more important than hierarchies. This shift results in a new approach to "species"; Darwin :concluded that species are what they appear to be: ideas, which are provisionally useful for naming groups of interacting individuals. "I look at the term species", he wrote, "as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other ... It does not essentially differ from the word variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, and for convenience sake."

Practically, biologists define species as populations of organisms that have a high level of genetic similarity. This may reflect an adaptation to the same niche, and the transfer of genetic material from one individual to others, through a variety of possible means. The exact level of similarity used in such a definition is arbitrary, but this is the most common definition used for organisms that reproduce asexually (asexual reproduction), such as some plants and microorganisms.

This lack of any clear species concept in microbiology has led to some authors arguing that the term "species" is not useful when studying bacterial evolution. Instead they see genes as moving freely between even distantly related bacteria, with the entire bacterial domain being a single gene pool. Nevertheless, a kind of rule of thumb has been established, saying that species of Bacteria or Archaea with 16S rRNA gene sequences more similar than 97% to each other need to be checked by DNA-DNA Hybridization if they belong to the same species or not. This concept has been updated recently, saying that the border of 97% was too low and can be raised to 98.7%.

In the study of sexually reproducing organisms, where genetic material is shared through the process of reproduction, the ability of two organisms to interbreed and produce fertile offspring of both sexes is generally accepted as a simple indicator that the organisms share enough genes to be considered members of the same species. Thus a "species" is a group of interbreeding organisms.

This definition can be extended to say that a species is a group of organisms that could potentially interbreed – fish could still be classed as the same species even if they live in different lakes, as long as they could still interbreed were they ever to come into contact with each other. On the other hand, there are many examples of series of three or more distinct populations, where individuals of the population in the middle can interbreed with the populations to either side, but individuals of the populations on either side cannot interbreed. Thus, one could argue that these populations constitute a single species, or two distinct species. This is not a paradox; it is evidence that species are defined by gene frequencies, and thus have fuzzy boundaries.

Consequently, any single, universal definition of "species" is necessarily arbitrary. Instead, biologists have proposed a range of definitions; which definition a biologists uses is a pragmatic choice, depending on the particularities of that biologist's research.

; Typological species : A group of organisms in which individuals are members of the species if they sufficiently conform to certain fixed properties or "rights of passage". The clusters of variations or phenotypes within specimens (i.e. longer or shorter tails) would differentiate the species. This method was used as a "classical" method of determining species, such as with Linnaeus early in evolutionary theory. However, we now know that different phenotypes do not always constitute different species (e.g.: a 4-winged Drosophila born to a 2-winged mother is not a different species). Species named in this manner are called morphospecies

; Morphological species : A population or group of populations that differs morphologically from other populations. For example, we can distinguish between a chicken and a duck because they have different shaped bills and the duck has webbed feet. Species have been defined in this way since well before the beginning of recorded history. This species concept is highly criticized because more recent genetic data reveal that genetically distinct populations may look very similar and, contrarily, large morphological differences sometimes exist between very closely related populations. Nonetheless, most species known have been described solely from morphology.

; Biological / Isolation species : A set of actually or potentially interbreeding populations. This is generally a useful formulation for scientists working with living examples of the higher taxa like mammals, fish, and birds, but more problematic for organisms that do not reproduce sexually. The results of breeding experiments done in artificial conditions may or may not reflect what would happen if the same organisms encountered each other in the wild, making it difficult to gauge whether or not the results of such experiments are meaningful in reference to natural populations.

; Biological / reproductive species : Two organisms that are able to reproduce naturally to produce fertile offspring of both sexes. Organisms that can reproduce but almost always make infertile hybrids of at least one sex, such as a mule, hinny or F1 male cattalo are not considered to be the same species.

; Recognition species: Based on shared reproductive systems, including mating behavior. The Recognition concept of species has been introduced by Hugh E. H. Paterson.

; Mate-recognition species : A group of organisms that are known to recognize one another as potential mates. Like the isolation species concept above, it applies only to organisms that reproduce sexually. Unlike the isolation species concept, it focuses specifically on pre-mating reproductive isolation.

; Evolutionary / Darwinian species : A group of organisms that shares an ancestor; a lineage that maintains its integrity with respect to other lineages through both time and space. At some point in the progress of such a group, some members may diverge from the main population and evolve into a subspecies, a process that eventually will lead to the formation of a new full species if isolation (geographical or ecological) is maintained.

; Phylogenetic (Cladistic) : A group of organisms that shares an ancestor; a lineage that maintains its integrity with respect to other lineages through both time and space. At some point in the progress of such a group, members may diverge from one another: when such a divergence becomes sufficiently clear, the two populations are regarded as separate species. This differs from evolutionary species in that the parent species goes extinct taxonomically when a new species evolve, the mother and daughter populations now forming two new species. Subspecies as such are not recognized under this approach; either a population is a phylogenetic species or it is not taxonomically distinguishable.

; Ecological species: A set of organisms adapted to a particular set of resources, called a niche, in the environment. According to this concept, populations form the discrete phonetic clusters that we recognize as species because the ecological and evolutionary processes controlling how resources are divided up tend to produce those clusters.

; Genetic species : Based on similarity of DNA of individuals or populations. Techniques to compare similarity of DNA include DNA-DNA hybridization, and genetic fingerprinting (or DNA barcoding).

; Phenetic species: Based on phenotypes.

; Microspecies : Species that reproduce without meiosis or fertilization so that each generation is genetically identical to the previous generation. See also apomixis.

; Cohesion species : Most inclusive population of individuals having the potential for phenotypic cohesion through intrinsic cohesion mechanisms. This is an expansion of the mate-recognition species concept to allow for post-mating isolation mechanisms; no matter whether populations can hybridize successfully, they are still distinct cohesion species if the amount of hybridization is insufficient to completely mix their respective gene pools.

; Evolutionarily Significant Unit (ESU) : An evolutionarily significant unit is a population of organisms that is considered distinct for purposes of conservation. Often referred to as a species or a wildlife species, an ESU also has several possible definitions, which coincide with definitions of species.

In practice, these definitions often coincide, and the differences between them are more a matter of emphasis than of outright contradiction. Nevertheless, no species concept yet proposed is entirely objective, or can be applied in all cases without resorting to judgment. Given the complexity of life, some have argued that such an objective definition is in all likelihood impossible, and biologists should settle for the most practical definition.

For most vertebrates, this is the biological species concept (BSC), and to a lesser extent (or for different purposes) the phylogenetic species concept (PSC). Many BSC subspecies are considered species under the PSC; the difference between the BSC and the PSC can be summed up insofar as that the BSC defines a species as a consequence of manifest evolutionary history, while the PSC defines a species as a consequence of manifest evolutionary potential. Thus, a PSC species is "made" as soon as an evolutionary lineage has started to separate, while a BSC species starts to exist only when the lineage separation is complete. Accordingly, there can be considerable conflict between alternative classifications based upon the PSC versus BSC, as they differ completely in their treatment of taxa that would be considered subspecies under the latter model (e.g., the numerous subspecies of honey bees).

Numbers of species

Bearing in mind the aforementioned problems with categorising species, the following numbers are only a soft guide. In 2007, they broke down as follows:

Total number of species (estimated): 7–100 millions (identified and unidentified), including:

*5–10 million bacteria; 74,000–120,000 fungi;

Of the identified eukaryote species we have: (the latter only for marine organisms) are trying to improve taxonomy and implement previously undiscovered species to the taxonomy system. Because we know but a portion of the organisms in the biosphere, we do not have a complete understanding of the workings of our environment. To make matters worse, despite the discovery of new species, according to professor James Mallet, we are wiping out these species at an unprecedented rate. This means that even before a new species has had the chance of being studied and classified, it may already be extinct.

Importance in biological classification

The idea of species has a long history. It is one of the most important levels of classification, for several reasons:

It often corresponds to what lay people treat as the different basic kinds of organism – dogs are one species, cats another.

It is the standard binomial nomenclature (or trinomial nomenclature) by which scientists typically refer to organisms.

It is the highest taxonomic level that cannot be made more or less inclusionary.

After years of use, the concept remains central to biology and a host of related fields, and yet also remains at times ill-defined.

Implications of assignment of species status

The naming of a particular species may be regarded as a hypothesis about the evolutionary relationships and distinguishability of that group of organisms. As further information comes to hand, the hypothesis may be confirmed or refuted. Sometimes, especially in the past when communication was more difficult, taxonomists working in isolation have given two distinct names to individual organisms later identified as the same species. When two named species are discovered to be of the same species, the older species name is usually retained, and the newer species name dropped, a process called synonymization, or colloquially, as lumping. Dividing a taxon into multiple, often new, taxons is called splitting. Taxonomists are often referred to as "lumpers" or "splitters" by their colleagues, depending on their personal approach to recognizing differences or commonalities between organisms (see lumpers and splitters).

Traditionally, researchers relied on observations of anatomical differences, and on observations of whether different populations were able to interbreed successfully, to distinguish species; both anatomy and breeding behavior are still important to assigning species status. As a result of the revolutionary (and still ongoing) advance in microbiological research techniques, including DNA analysis, in the last few decades, a great deal of additional knowledge about the differences and similarities between species has become available. Many populations formerly regarded as separate species are now considered a single taxon, and many formerly grouped populations have been split. Any taxonomic level (species, genus, family, etc.) can be synonymized or split, and at higher taxonomic levels, these revisions have been still more profound.

From a taxonomical point of view, groups within a species can be defined as being of a taxon hierarchically lower than a species. In zoology only the subspecies is used, while in botany the variety, subvariety, and form are used as well. In conservation biology, the concept of evolutionary significant units (ESU) is used, which may be define either species or smaller distinct population segments. Identifying and naming species is the providence of alpha taxonomy.

Historical development of the species concept

In the earliest works of science, a species was simply an individual organism that represented a group of similar or nearly identical organisms. No other relationships beyond that group were implied. Aristotle used the words genus and species to mean generic and specific categories. Aristotle and other pre-Darwinian scientists took the species to be distinct and unchanging, with an "essence", like the chemical elements. When early observers began to develop systems of organization for living things, they began to place formerly isolated species into a context. Many of these early delineation schemes would now be considered whimsical and these included consanguinity based on color (all plants with yellow flowers) or behavior (snakes, scorpions and certain biting ants).

In the 18th century Swedish scientist Carolus Linnaeus classified organisms according to differences in the form of reproductive apparatus. Although his system of classification sorts organisms according to degrees of similarity, it made no claims about the relationship between similar species. At that time, it was still widely believed that there was no organic connection between species, no matter how similar they appeared. This approach also suggested a type of idealism: the notion that each species existed as an "ideal form". Although there are always differences (although sometimes minute) between individual organisms, Linnaeus considered such variation problematic. He strove to identify individual organisms that were exemplary of the species, and considered other non-exemplary organisms to be deviant and imperfect.

By the 19th century most naturalists understood that species could change form over time, and that the history of the planet provided enough time for major changes. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, in his 1809 Zoological Philosophy, offered one of the first logical arguments against creationism. The new emphasis was on determining how a species could change over time. Lamarck suggested that an organism could pass on an acquired trait to its offspring, i.e., the giraffe's long neck was attributed to generations of giraffes stretching to reach the leaves of higher treetops (this well-known and simplistic example, however, does not do justice to the breadth and subtlety of Lamarck's ideas). With the acceptance of the natural selection idea of Charles Darwin in the 1860s, however, Lamarck's view of goal-oriented evolution, also known as a teleological process, was eclipsed. Recent interest in inheritance of acquired characteristics centers around epigenetic processes, e.g. methylation, that do not affect DNA sequences, but instead alter expression in an inheritable manner. Thus, neo-lamarckism, as it is sometimes termed, is not a challenge to the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace provided what scientists now consider as the most powerful and compelling theory of evolution. Darwin argued that it was populations that evolved, not individuals. His argument relied on a radical shift in perspective from that of Linnaeus: rather than defining species in ideal terms (and searching for an ideal representative and rejecting deviations), Darwin considered variation among individuals to be natural. He further argued that variation, far from being problematic, actually provides the explanation for the existence of distinct species.

Darwin's work drew on Thomas Malthus' insight that the rate of growth of a biological population will always outpace the rate of growth of the resources in the environment, such as the food supply. As a result, Darwin argued, not all the members of a population will be able to survive and reproduce. Those that did will, on average, be the ones possessing variations—however slight—that make them slightly better adapted to the environment. If these variable traits are heritable, then the offspring of the survivors will also possess them. Thus, over many generations, adaptive variations will accumulate in the population, while counter-adaptive traits will tend to be eliminated.

It should be emphasized that whether a variation is adaptive or non-adaptive depends on the environment: different environments favor different traits. Since the environment effectively selects which organisms live to reproduce, it is the environment (the "fight for existence") that selects the traits to be passed on. This is the theory of evolution by natural selection. In this model, the length of a giraffe's neck would be explained by positing that proto-giraffes with longer necks would have had a significant reproductive advantage to those with shorter necks. Over many generations, the entire population would be a species of long-necked animals.

In 1859, when Darwin published his theory of natural selection, the mechanism behind the inheritance of individual traits was unknown. Although Darwin made some speculations on how traits are inherited (pangenesis), his theory relies only on the fact that inheritable traits exist, and are variable (which makes his accomplishment even more remarkable.) Although Gregor Mendel's paper on genetics was published in 1866, its significance was not recognized. It was not until 1900 that his work was rediscovered by Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns and Erich von Tschermak, who realised that the "inheritable traits" in Darwin's theory are genes.

The theory of the evolution of species through natural selection has two important implications for discussions of species—consequences that fundamentally challenge the assumptions behind Linnaeus' taxonomy. First, it suggests that species are not just similar, they may actually be related. Some students of Darwin argue that all species are descended from a common ancestor. Second, it supposes that "species" are not homogeneous, fixed, permanent things; members of a species are all different, and over time species change. This suggests that species do not have any clear boundaries but are rather momentary statistical effects of constantly changing gene-frequencies. One may still use Linnaeus' taxonomy to identify individual plants and animals, but one can no longer think of species as independent and immutable.

The rise of a new species from a parental line is called speciation. There is no clear line demarcating the ancestral species from the descendant species.

Although the current scientific understanding of species suggests that there is no rigorous and comprehensive way to distinguish between different species in all cases, biologists continue to seek concrete ways to operationalize the idea. One of the most popular biological definitions of species is in terms of reproductive isolation; if two creatures cannot reproduce to produce fertile offspring of both sexes, then they are in different species. This definition captures a number of intuitive species boundaries, but it remains imperfect. It has nothing to say about species that reproduce asexually, for example, and it is very difficult to apply to extinct species. Moreover, boundaries between species are often fuzzy: there are examples where members of one population can produce fertile offspring of both sexes with a second population, and members of the second population can produce fertile offspring of both sexes with members of a third population, but members of the first and third population cannot produce fertile offspring, or can only produce fertile offspring of the homozygous sex. Consequently, some people reject this definition of a species.

Richard Dawkins defines two organisms as conspecific if and only if they have the same number of chromosomes and, for each chromosome, both organisms have the same number of nucleotides (The Blind Watchmaker, p. 118). However, most if not all taxonomists would strongly disagree. For example, in many amphibians, most notably in New Zealand's Leiopelma frogs, the genome consists of "core" chromosomes that are mostly invariable and accessory chromosomes, of which exist a number of possible combinations. Even though the chromosome numbers are highly variable between populations, these can interbreed successfully and form a single evolutionary unit. In plants, polyploidy is extremely commonplace with few restrictions on interbreeding; as individuals with an odd number of chromosome sets are usually sterile, depending on the actual number of chromosome sets present, this results in the odd situation where some individuals of the same evolutionary unit can interbreed with certain others and some cannot, with all populations being eventually linked as to form a common gene pool.

The classification of species has been profoundly affected by technological advances that have allowed researchers to determine relatedness based on molecular markers, starting with the comparatively crude blood plasma precipitation assays in the mid-20th century to Charles Sibley's ground-breaking DNA-DNA hybridization studies in the 1970s leading to DNA sequencing techniques. The results of these techniques caused revolutionary changes in the higher taxonomic categories (such as phyla and classes), resulting in the reordering of many branches of the phylogenetic tree (see also: molecular phylogeny). For taxonomic categories below genera, the results have been mixed so far; the pace of evolutionary change on the molecular level is rather slow, yielding clear differences only after considerable periods of reproductive separation. DNA-DNA hybridization results have led to misleading conclusions, the Pomarine Skua – Great Skua phenomenon being a famous example. Turtles have been determined to evolve with just one-eighth of the speed of other reptiles on the molecular level, and the rate of molecular evolution in albatrosses is half of what is found in the rather closely related storm-petrels. The hybridization technique is now obsolete and is replaced by more reliable computational approaches for sequence comparison. Molecular taxonomy is not directly based on the evolutionary processes, but rather on the overall change brought upon by these processes. The processes that lead to the generation and maintenance of variation such as mutation, crossover and selection are not uniform (see also molecular clock). DNA is only extremely rarely a direct target of natural selection rather than changes in the DNA sequence enduring over generations being a result of the latter; for example, silent transition-transversion combinations would alter the melting point of the DNA sequence, but not the sequence of the encoded proteins and thus are a possible example where, for example in microorganisms, a mutation confers a change in fitness all by itself.

Species as taxa

The scientific name of a species (often of Latin or Greek origin) in the binominal nomenclature introduced by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 is composed of two parts, which are written in italic font and for which there are different expressions in botany and zoology. The first part of that name is spelled upper case and is in both disciplines known as the genus name (also called the generic name). The second part is always spelled lower case and in botany it is called the specific epithet.

Example: in the European beech (Fagus sylvatica) the component Fagus refers to the genus, sylvatica is the specific epithet.

In zoology, the second part is called the specific name.

Example: in the lion (Panthera leo) the component Panthera refers to the genus, leo is the specific name.

The scientific name is completed when authors, years and parentheses are added.

In botany the name of the author is usually abbreviated, for example "L." stands for "Linnaeus".

Example: shiitake Lentinula edodes (Berk.) Pegler
M. J. Berkeley was the first to describe the species, D. Pegler has placed it into the currently used system.

In zoology, the addition of author and year are optional, Panthera leo is thus an entirely correct name. The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature prescribes how to add author(s) (if possible not abbreviated) and year (or author alone without year). If the species is cited in different genus than the one in which it was originally described, author(s) and year are given in parentheses. Between author and year often a comma is set (but not required).

Example: lion Panthera leo (Linnaeus, 1758)
Carl Nilsson Linnæus described the lion first and as Felis leo. The person who first placed the lion in the genus Panthera Oken, 1816 is not relevant in zoology. Instead of Linnæus, usually Linnaeus is spelled.

See also

==Notes and references==

External links

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry

Barcoding of species

European Species Names in Linnaean, Czech, English, German and French

Catalogue of Life

VisualTaxa

Other Species Concepts Berkeley University

"Gone", Mother Jones, May/June 2007.

Speciation

2003-12-31, ScienceDaily: Working On The 'Porsche Of Its Time': New Model For Species Determination Offered Quote: "...two species of dinosaur that are members of the same genera varied from each other by just 2.2%. Translation of the percentage into an actual number results in an average of just three skeletal differences out of the total 338 bones in the body. Amazingly, 58% of these differences occurred in the skull alone. "This is a lot less variation than I'd expected", said Novak..."

2003-08-08, ScienceDaily: Cross-species Mating May Be Evolutionarily Important And Lead To Rapid Change, Say Indiana University Researchers Quote: "...the sudden mixing of closely related species may occasionally provide the energy to impel rapid evolutionary change..."

2004-01-09 ScienceDaily: Mayo Researchers Observe Genetic Fusion Of Human, Animal Cells; May Help Explain Origin Of AIDS Quote: "...The researchers have discovered conditions in which pig cells and human cells can fuse together in the body to yield hybrid cells that contain genetic material from both species... "What we found was completely unexpected", says Jeffrey Platt, M.D."

2000-09-18, ScienceDaily: Scientists Unravel Ancient Evolutionary History Of Photosynthesis Quote: "...gene-swapping was common among ancient bacteria early in evolution..."

Category:Biology rank24 rank24

Caption	Henstridge at the 2009 Heart Truth fashion show
Birth name	Natasha T. Henstridge
Birth date	August 15, 1974
Birth place	Springdale, Newfoundland, Canada
Years active	1995–present
Spouse	Damian Chapa (1995-1996)
Partner	Liam Waite (1996-2004) Darius Campbell (2005-2010)

Natasha T. Henstridge (born August 15, 1974) is a Canadian fashion model turned actress. Her most notable on-screen roles include Species, The Whole Nine Yards, It Had To Be You and the Canadian TV mini-series Would Be Kings, for which she won the Gemini Award for best actress. She most recently played the role of Taylor Wethersby in the TV Series Eli Stone.

Early life

Henstridge was born in Springdale, Newfoundland and Labrador, the daughter of Helen, a homemaker, and Brian Henstridge, a biker/contractor. She was raised in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada with younger brother, Shane.

Modeling career

At the age of thirteen, she entered the Casablanca Modeling Agency's "Look of the Year" contest and was chosen first runner-up. The following year, Henstridge went to Paris to pursue her modeling ambitions. At fifteen, she was featured on her first magazine cover, the French edition of Cosmopolitan. Several magazine covers followed and Henstridge went on to do television commercials for products such as Olay, Old Spice, and Lady Stetson. Her modeling career established, Henstridge moved on to a career in movies.

Movies

In her 1995 film debut Species, Henstridge played Sil, a genetically engineered alien/human hybrid created from a message received by SETI, who breaks free from the captivity of a laboratory. Pursued by a team of experts who band together to stop her before she multiplies, Sil embarks on a killing spree while also discovering her powerful instinct to mate. Species was an instant hit, raking in $113 Million (USD). Notable for its sexual content, the film won Henstridge the MTV Movie award for "best kiss" for a scene in which her character, while kissing an aggressive would-be suitor, impales his head on her tongue. In 1998, she played Eve, a more ambiguous genetic duplicate of Sil, in Species II, which was a failure at the box office.

A few smaller independent movies followed, including Bela Donna and Dog Park, with varied box office returns. She also starred opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme in the action/adventure movie Maximum Risk. In 2000, she starred in The Whole Nine Yards and its 2004 sequel The Whole Ten Yards. Despite having some reservations about the science fiction genre, she signed up for John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars (2001) in the lead role. The film was not well-received, with a 21% rating in Rotten Tomatoes. In 2004, she briefly appeared as Eve in Species III.

She is known for her confident intimate or sex scenes with her co-actors, example of which can be seen in Species (1995) or Steal (2002). Henstridge turned down the role ultimately played by Linda Fiorentino in Men in Black (1997) and was the first choice for the role of videogame heroine Jill Valentine in (2004) which she had to pull out of due to conflicts with Species III.

Television

She has played a number of roles on television, for example in Caracara and The Outer Limits. From 2005 to 2006, Henstridge had a recurring role in the cancelled ABC drama Commander in Chief, which starred Geena Davis as a fictional female U.S. President. She also hosted on TLC, a show about urban legends.

Natasha guest starred in the South Park first season episode "Tom's Rhinoplasty" as a substitute teacher, and was credited as "the chick from Species".

Henstridge was working on the TV show She Spies, prior to its cancellation. She has also completed a TV movie for the Lifetime channel titled Widow on the Hill. In 2006 she filmed the CTV original mini-series Would Be Kings in Hamilton, Ontario, for which she won a Gemini Award.

She also starred in the expansion set to the video game , entitled .

In 2008 Natasha played a role on the new ABC show, Eli Stone. She has also been involved with two new productions, joining the cast of Dave Rodriguez's "Anytown", an indie drama that examines a racist high school attack and its aftermath. Henstridge will play a news anchor covering an attack on an Indian-American boy by two fellow students who videotape the crime. The event forces her to examine the media's post-September 11 role in fueling hate crimes committed by youth. She has also been involved with the production of Should've Been Romeo from American Independent Pictures.

Personal life

Henstridge was married to actor Damian Chapa from 1995 to 1996. She has two sons by actor Liam Waite, named Tristan River, born October 1998, and Asher Sky, born September 2001. Henstridge had a five-year relationship with Scottish singer-songwriter, stage actor, and author Darius Campbell. The two broke off their engagement in early 2010.

Filmography

{|class="wikitable" style="font-size: 90%;" border="2" cellpadding="4" background: #f9f9f9; |- align="center" ! colspan=4 style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Film |- align="center" ! style="background: #CCCCCC;" | Year ! style="background: #CCCCCC;" | Film ! style="background: #CCCCCC;" | Role ! style="background: #CCCCCC;" | Notes |- | 1995 | Species | Sil | |- | rowspan=2|1996 | Maximum Risk | Alex Minetti | |- | | Delon | |- | rowspan=4|1998 | Bela Donna | Donna | |- | Standoff | Mary | |- | Dog Park | Lorna | |- | Species II | Eve | |- | 1999 | Caracara (aka. The Last Witness) | Rachel Sutherland | TV Film |- | rowspan=5|2000 | Bounce | Mimi Prager | |- | The Whole Nine Yards | Cynthia Tudeski | |- | Second Skin | Crystal Ball | |- | It Had to Be You | Anna Penn | |- | A Better Way to Die | Kelly | |- | rowspan=3|2001 | A Girl, Three Guys, and a Gun | 5 O'Clock Girl | |- | Ghosts of Mars | Lieutenant Melanie Ballard | |- | Kevin of the North | Bonnie Livengood | |- | 2002 | Steal (aka. Riders) | Karen | |- | rowspan=2|2004 | Species III | Eve | |- | The Whole Ten Yards | Cynthia | |- | 2005 |Widow on the Hill | Linda Dupree Cavanaugh | TV Film |- | 2008 | Deception | Simone Wilkinson | |- | rowspan=2|2009 | Anytown | Carol Mills | |- | Let the Game Begin | Angela | |- | rowspan=2|2010 | You Lucky Dog | Lisa Rayborn | TV Film |- | The Devil's Teardrop | Margaret Lukas | TV Film |- | 2011 | Should've Been Romeo | | filming |- |- align="center" ! colspan=4 style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Television |- align="center" ! style="background: #CCCCCC;" | Year ! style="background: #CCCCCC;" | Title ! style="background: #CCCCCC;" | Role ! style="background: #CCCCCC;" | Notes |- | 2000 | Jason and the Argonauts | Hypsipyle | Miniseries |- | 2002–2004 | She Spies | Cassie McBain | 40 episodes |- | 2005–2006 | Commander in Chief | Jayne Murray | 16 episodes |- | 2008 |Would Be Kings | | Miniseries |- | 2008–2009 | Eli Stone | Taylor Wethersby | 26 episodes |- | 2009 | Impact | Dr. Maddie Rhodes | Miniseries |- | 2010 | Drop Dead Diva | Claire Harrison | 2 episodes |- |- align="center" ! colspan=4 style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Video Game |- align="center" ! style="background: #CCCCCC;" | Year ! style="background: #CCCCCC;" | Title ! style="background: #CCCCCC;" | Role ! style="background: #CCCCCC;" | Notes |- | 2008 | | Alexa Kovacs | |}

References

External links

Natasha Henstridge at Allmovie

Category:1974 births Category:Living people Category:Canadian female models Category:Canadian film actors Category:Canadian television actors Category:People from Wood Buffalo, Alberta Category:People from Newfoundland Category:Actors from Alberta

Name	Immortal Technique
Background	solo_singer
Born	February 19, 1978 Lima, Lima Province, Peru Most of his lyrics focus on controversial issues in global politics. The views expressed in his lyrics are largely a mixture of socialist commentary on issues such as class hierarchy, poverty, religion, government and institutional racism.
Align	center|2001
Align	center|—
Align	center|—
Align	center|2003
Align	center|—
Align	center|—
Align	center|2008
Align	center|99
Align	center|12
Align	center|2011
Align	center|TBA
Align	center|TBA
Colspan	4 align=center|
Align	center|2001
Align	left|"Dance With the Devil"
Align	center|(Citation needed)
Align	left rowspan=1|Revolutionary Vol. 1
Align	center|2003
Align	left|"The Cause of Death"
Align	center|(Citation needed)
Align	left rowspan=3|Revolutionary Vol. 2
Align	center|2003
Align	left|"Industrial Revolution"
Align	center|63
Align	center|2004
Align	left|"The Point of No Return"
Align	center|57
Align	center|2004
Align	left|"Bin Laden"
Align	center|?
Align	left|Single only
Align	center|2005
Align	left|"Caught in a Hustle"
Align	center|?
Align	left|BAADASSSSS! soundtrack
Name	Immortal Technique
Alternative names	Felipe Coronel
Short description	Rapper, Activist
Date of birth	February 19, 1978
Place of birth	Lima, Peru

Category:1978 births Category:Living people Category:2000s rappers Category:2010s rappers Category:American music industry executives Category:American people convicted of assault Category:American socialists Category:Baruch College alumni Category:Hispanic and Latino American rappers Category:Penn State University alumni Category:People from Harlem Category:People from Manhattan Category:People from Lima Category:Peruvian immigrants to the United States Category:Peruvian people of Black African descent Category:Rappers from New York City Category:Underground rappers