Re: Hanson 2006, Mortimer, Baeker response

["T. Michael Keesey" <keesey@gmail.com>]

Mike Taylor wrote:
> It's stronger than that, of course: it's _impossible_ to define a
> node-based taxon based on a single member.

Kind of. Node-based is of the form: "the final common ancestor of X
and Y [etc. as needed], plus all descendants thereof". But suppose we
remove the "Y" and allow "common ancestor" to include "self". We get,
"the final common ancestor of X, plus all descendants thereof," which
reduces to, "X plus all of its descendants".

Is this a node-based clade? Good question.

I'll be discussing more things along these lines at my talk at the
ISPN (PhyloCode) Meeting later this month. Anyone else in this forum
going?
--
Mike Keesey
The Dinosauricon: http://dino.lm.com
Parry & Carney: http://parryandcarney.com