Re: Applying Sereno's definitions to Neotetanurae: Part 1 & 2

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

Nick Pharris (npharris@umich.edu) wrote:

<With all respect to Jaime, I couldn't disagree more.  I think we can all agree
that taxa do not have absolute ranks, but they do have relative ranks, and I
think having a set of standardized nested clade suffixes is very useful.  Let's
not throw out the baby with the bath water.>

  What is a rank, either absolute or relative, perceived nonetheless, anyway?
That taxa can contain others does not mean that we should use names to show
this containment, though we have, by modifying epithets with a superimposed
sequence that would somehow validate this successive containment scheme.

  (Say, I am using Microraporoidea, Microraptoridae, and Microraptorinae.)

  This can easily be shown when using bad phylogenies, or rather older
phylogenies on which some names were based and later studies have revised the
topologies, effectively switching the anchors for several given clades, and one
such could conceivably place an -oidea clade within an -idae clade that isn't
itself a "genus", if one were to adopt definition based phylogenetic taxonomy
and its associated "free form" nomenclature. Mandate in Linnaean taxonomy for a
hierarchical nomenclature is based on the perceived reality of Species et
Genera et Familia et Ordini et ad nauseam, in light of the Golden Ladder, and
this innate relationship has led us to be inundated with the nomenclature to
the point that we propose it even when we realize the system is bunk and
actually obscures actual relationships.

  I am not saying we shuld suspend the terminology altogether, as I also
advocate retaining the terms we have today, but I AM saying we should stop
adhering to the baggage these names give us with entirely benign purpose, yet
based on incomprehensible, non-evolutionary ideas of patterns among living
creatures. Remeber, for example, that traditionalists insist that Reptilia and
Aves are equivalent classes in rank, and thus included taxa follow this
principle, with the orders and such stemming from a Class ranked framework,
rather than any other. In the last two decades, more work has been done to
realize the terminology simply doesn't work to qualify what we know of them,
and we have a "class" evolving inside another "class", yet taxonominically they
are equivalent, and they are continued to be represented this way, without any
seeming logic but tradition. Even systematists that don't USE the ranks in
their phylogenies still use them in their classifications, which would make us
wonder what the purpose of these terms are, after all? No, I think we should
toss baby, bathwater, and bathtub out. We can do away with the Linnaean system
by showing it is based on illogical (and incorrect) principles of hierarchical,
quasi-religious views of organismal superiority.

  However, since I have also advocated we not toss the ICZN out just yet,
solutions can come in the form of reworking the arguments about ranks, by
removing them, and collapsing the issues of priority for Species, Genus, and
Family into two groups: type specimen fixation and associated issues for a
species/genus name or binomen, and all supra "specific"/"generic" nomenclature,
which is fixed on a species. Species recommendation can follow any of the
principles the draft PhyloCode has listed, including a universal binomen label
for every species, or just for new species. We can, in effect, MERGE the two
documents, but this would ... cause more ruckus than any other consideration I
think. If we discard ranks in ICZN/ICBN structure, and thus adopt the
principles above, and have the PhyloCode govern definitional systems, we can
thus save them both and have a more pliable system. People can continue to use,
abuse, and splice ranks as they wish, but it will be without governance (such
that people can call an order a class and vice versa, without anyone blinking
twice, or raising holy heck over the issue -- since of course, ranks are "real"
to other people).

  Cheers,

Jaime A. Headden

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


        
                
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