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Re: Pan-clades, good or bad?



I wrote:

<<Crown clade names shall include a contained clade name with Corono-
preceeding them.>> 

David Marjanovic (david.marjanovic@gmx.at) wrote:

<Why not Neo-? Is much shorter.>

  Is used conventionally for smaller groups than the name it's applied to.
Neoaves is within Aves, Neosuchia is within Suchia, etc. That's one
reason, anyway.

  As explained before, it doesn't make sense to have prefixes for any ONE
kind of clade. As in "traditional" or "Linnaean" taxonomy, different
_levels_ of groups get special names, aka "ranks," and the use of the
pan-stem application of the Pan- prefix, from the Greek for "all," sets a
similar type of situation. Therefore, to be equitable, apply the same
theory of pan-stem affixes to all types of clades.

<<Stem clade names shall include a contained clade name with Clado- or
Stirpso- preceeding them.>>

<If, then Stirpo-; the -s of stirps is an ending.>

  Because I thought there was a declination as _stirpsus_. However, I
checked and this is wrong, the declination being _stirpis_.

<<Node clade names shall include a contained clade name with Ramoso-
preceeding them.>>

<Ramosus? Branchy?>

  BranchING. As in the implicit bifurcation at a node.

<<Lineage-segment clade names shall include a contained clade name with
Genu- preceeding them.>>

<Why "knee"?>

  I almost wrote "genuo-" ... for _genus_, meaning lineage or derived
from, or origin from. And as I thought about it, use of the term "clade"
is erroneous in the argument of lineage-segments. The root is _geni-_
however ... so: Geni-.

<Was a joke, right?>

  Joke? Why would I be joking? Pan- prefixes aren't jokes. I think if a
system is going to be applied, it should be done LOGICALLY ... this means,
as I stated above, equitably and _universally_. This is pointing out
another reason I dislike attempts to standardize how taxonomy is to be
"organized." "At a glace recognition" is one of the main reasons why many
"traditional" taxonomists argue for benefits of ranks, despite that most
ingroup-workers know the hierarchy and "arrangement" of the clades on the
"ladder" sans ranks. If we use a prefix to apply to ONE type of clade, why
should we not use prefixes for ALL of them? I seriously don't have much of
a problem with this except that I hate the idea of prefixes becoming the
new ranks.

  The PhyloCode advocates loss of standardized suffixes -idae, -inae,
-oidea, etc, with the recommendation that supraspecific taxa be labelled
with -ida only to "tell them apart;" after all, they will already be
italicized, potentially reduced to lower-case, or all having intitial
capitals, etc. Here's another way to differentiate clade types by sight,
contra the spirit of the loss of "identifiers." IF the idea is to let the
nomenclature stand for a label of the definition or the content, and the
definitions relate to application of the name, then it stands to reason
this can be done without Pan- prefixes as easily as with them. Since
several names are effectively used AS pan-stems despite lack of Pan- in
the name, we can easily just NOT use Pan- prefixes and be perfectly fine.
I dislike excessive taxonomy.

  Cheers,

=====
Jaime A. Headden

  Little steps are often the hardest to take.  We are too used to making leaps 
in the face of adversity, that a simple skip is so hard to do.  We should all 
learn to walk soft, walk small, see the world around us rather than zoom by it.

"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)


                
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