What's going on

["Ken Kinman" <kinman@hotmail.com>]

Matthew,
    I am basically a Mayrian, and even more so an Ashlockian systematist.  
However, I have tried to go beyond their methodologies to explicitly state 
sister group inforation in my classifications.  That is why the 
cross-referencing Kinman markers are there.
    In your example, Tyler would be a choanoflagellate (almost an animal 
but not quite, as you put it).  Marla would be a primitive sponge.  So I 
will show you how my classification shows Metazoa evolved from (has a sister 
group within) Choanozoa, and also how Metaphyta is shown evolving from 
(having a sister group within) Chlorophyta.  The coding is now out-of-date, 
but it will demonstrate what I am saying (for sake of brevity, I am giving 
the coding and taxon names only):
 3   Rhodophyta
 4   Chlorophyta
_a_  {{Metaphyta}}
 5   Choanozoa
_a_  {{Metazoa}}
 6   Eumycota
Within Chlorophyta, I put the same {{Metaphyta}} marker at Class and Order 
levels as well:
 1  Charophycea
       1  Chlorokybales
       2  Klebsormidiales
       B  Conjugales
       3  Coleochaetales
       B  {{Metaphyta}}
       4  Charales
_a_ {{Metaphyta}}
 2  Prasinophycea
       (chlorophytes continued......)
--------------------------------------------------------
    As you can see, I code Metaphyta as sister group to Order 
Coleochaetales, but I can still upgrade Metaphyta to Kingdom Level 
(reflecting divergence and diversity) as Mayr and Ashlock would advocate.
    Such a fusion of eclectic and cladistic classificatory methods allows 
us to have our cake and eat it too (so to speak).  Intermediate category 
names are no longer formally recognized, being coded instead, but can be 
referred to informally (just as in my thecodont classification, I referred 
to the ornithodiran clade) and can even be explicitly shown to the left of 
the classification.
    I have gone a step beyond Ashlock and Mayr in making eclectic 
classifications "cladisto-friendly", and hopefully also making strictly 
cladistic classification more "eclectic-friendly".  Thus Hull's 1979 
statement is no longer true: "no methods have been set out thus far which 
permit the inclusion of both sorts of information [genealogy and divergence] 
in a single classification in such a way that both are retrievable."  Such a 
middle ground approach is now available.
                     --------Ken Kinman
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