AHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH
the real life notion of "species" is entirely divorced from how Pokémon function. everything you;'re complaining about is entirely semantics, and semantics that don't matter at-fucking-all given the ultimate issue - reproduction. an animal species is defined as organisms that can interbreed and create fertile offspring. okay, so magikarp and gyarados is a species. but Gyarados can interbreed with anything in the Water2 egg group! there isn't even any hybridization via this, they just... pop out a baby magikarp. so, what magikarp, gyarados, and every single Water2 Pokémon are a species? BUT THEN. BUT THEN. Gyarados is also in the Dragon egg group. So every Pokémon in Water2 and Dragon are one species? What's this, Malamar is in Water2 and Water1? Wailmer is in Water2 and Field? Appletun is in Dragon and Grass? the only possible conclusion based on animal taxonomy is that Pokémon itself is the single species and that every dex entry is just a wildly variant phenotype. maybe a few dozen sub-species at most, if you want to consider combinations of egg groups to determine species. the whole regional variant/evolutionary stage/"counterpart" thing is fucking tauros-shit compared to this.
>>49008068whoever made this gets it
>>49004756also this. not every god damn Pikachu finds a thunder stone, but that doesn't make it immune to natural death. the only conceivable manner in which I would conflate the too is with baby Pokémon, where evolution is necessary to reproduce. then again, no baby Pokémon needs an item to mature, just conducive environmental conditions. i would say that each evolutionary line is a different phenotype variant - for, regional variants of an evolutionary line or counterparts like throw and sawk a more proper term would be some bullshit like 'closely-related phenotype variants'
