Re: [Re: Non-serpentine lacertids (was RE:WHAT'S GOING ON?)]

[chris brochu <cbrochu@fmnh.org>]

>chris brochu wrote:
>
>>Ladies and Gentlemen,
>
>>      Second, there are several operations that are getting conflated,
>>but could be viewed as logically separate.  These include:
>>
>>- the recognition of monophyletic taxa alone, and not erecting
>>supraspecific paraphyletic taxa.
>>
>>- abandonment of Linnean ranks.
>>
>>- using phylogeny to define group names and not character possession.
>
>Not that I mean to throw a random card into the debate, but I'd like to
>bring up a topic that I previously asked Kevin Padian (in the days of
>snail-mail).
>
>If cladistics insists on assiging a name to each node of a clade, then
>there would be an awful lot of names to recognize and use. Particularly
>when you have clades nested several layes deep, then it becomes unwieldy.
>Padian replied to the effect that this is being addresses, that perhaps
>some nodes will remain unnamed. Well, is this the case?


In most uses of phylogenetic taxonomy, the majority of nodes go unnamed.
>From what I can tell, nodes tend to get named only if there's a need to
name them - i.e. they are actually being discussed.



chris



----------------------
Christopher A. Brochu
Department of Geology
Field Museum of Natural History
1400 S. Lake Shore Drive
Chicago, IL 60605

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