Just for fun, I found few quotations from Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" that illustrate the point that the singular and plural forms are both "species."
"a naturalist ... might come to the conclusion that each species [singular] had not been independently created, but had descended, like varieties, from other species [plural]."
"...I think it highly probable that our domestic dogs have descended from several wild species [plural]..."
"...no other existing species [singular] is thus coloured and marked..."
"...After fourteen thousand generations, six new species [plural], marked by the letters n14 to z14, are supposed to have been produced..."
"...every naturalist knows vaguely what he means when he speaks of a species [singular]..."
A fair number of English words have identical singular and plural forms. One sheep, two sheep; one deer, two deer. Dr. Seuss wrote a book entitled "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish."
If the singular form ends in "-s," and a few words do, then the plural will usually be the same. One army corps, two army corps. One crossroads, two crossroads.
Things that come in pairs often follow the pattern of "pants." The proper singular form is "a pair of pants." If there are two of them, they are "two pairs of pants." However, with a possessive pronoun, we would just say "my pants," in which case the singular and plural are the same. "I packed my good suit pants" could mean one pair. "I just got all of my suit pants back from the cleaners" could mean several pants. The same pattern applies to "scissors," "pliers," "trousers," "pajamas," etc.