Re: Cladistics and names

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <th81@umail.umd.edu>]

At 05:37 PM 5/15/97 -0400, Jeff Poling wrote:
>   Time for a new entry in the dictionary; however, Fastovsky and Weishampel
>is back at the library, so I must ask:  what is the difference between
>cladistics and phylogenetic taxonomy?

Cladisitcs (aka phylogenetic systematics aka Hennigian systematics) is the
whole field of phylogenetic reconstruction, approximation, description, and
analysis using the principle of shared derived characters for determining
relationships.  Although there were German (and, as I recently heard from
Ralph Chapman, South American) antecedants to cladistics dating back a
century, cladistics as practiced today stems from the work of Willi Hennig
in the 1950s and 1960s.

Phylogenetic taxonomy is that branch of cladistics concerned with the verbal
representation (rather than the reconstruction or estimation) of
phylogenetic relationships.  It was developed by Kevin de Queiroz and
Jacques Gauthier in a series of papers in the early 1990s.

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Vertebrate Paleontologist     Webpage: http://www.geol.umd.edu
Dept. of Geology              Email:th81@umail.umd.edu
University of Maryland        Phone:301-405-4084
College Park, MD  20742       Fax:  301-314-9661