Re: Definition of 'fish', & GSP is displeased ;-)

[Augusto Haro <augustoharo@gmail.com>]

2010/5/3 Augusto Haro <augustoharo@gmail.com>:
> This may have been said many times, but to me, phylogenetics should
> avoid names such as "Pisces" and the informal term "fish". Not only
> because fish is used for a lot of animals which are not even
> chordates, as David states. The same for reptiles, amphibians,
> invertebrates, and all those non-monophyletic groups. Re-defining
> leads to confusion, especially to new students and to professionals
> dealing with the main public, which manage dictionary definitions.
> Fortunately, this happened with some non-monophyletic clades such as
> Pachydermata.
>
> 2010/5/3 David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>:
>> I forgot what exactly Säve-Söderbergh thought about the ancestry of
>> amniotes. He considered them all fairly close relatives, but with a few
>> anamniotic animals inside the clade...
>>
>> Also, the influential von Huene used Reptiliomorpha for a paraphyletic
>> group; he, too, rejected amniote monophyly.
>> http://dml.cmnh.org/2002Jan/msg01091.html
>>
>> (BTW, the new search engine is very promising!)
>>
>>> > And after all, things like hagfish and ratfish and lungfish lie
>>> > outside the Actinopterygii.  So the word 'fish' is pretty
>>> > entrenched in the English language for lots of
>>> > non-actinopterygians.
>>> >
>>> > It's also entrenched for a number of non-vertebrates (eg.
>>> > starfish).
>>>
>>>  True; but 'starfish' is an exception that proves the rule.  Overall,
>>>  the vast majority of names ending in 'fish' are, well, fishes (=
>>>  non-tetrapod vertebrates).
>>
>> Crayfish, silverfish, cuttlefish, jellyfish...
>>
>