Ebony and Ivory; ICZN and PhyloCode (Was: Suchosaurus, Baryonyx and Martinavis)

[Mike Taylor <mike@indexdata.com>]

Tim Williams  > At some stage the ICZN and PhyloCode will have to duke it out.
 > Pistols at ten paces, I say.

Why?  I don't see that at all.  I think they are much more
complementary than competitive.  I also don't see any problem in the
possibility of Megalosauroidea (or whatever it was) being a valid
clade under the PhyloCode but not a valid superfamily under the ICZN
-- not so long as we're clear which sense we use the name in.  After
all, we already have a very same situation with names that are valid
under both codes, e.g. Cetiosauridae which is traditionally a
paraphyletic family under the ICZN but (of course) a clade in PN.

Sometimes it seems as though people are deliberately looking for
points of conflict between the codes.  To me, that's like looking for
points of conflict between the laws of a country and the laws of
rugby.  They work together, not against each other.

T. Michael Keesey writes:
 > > Frankly, I think the best policy would be for ICZN to be
 > > restricted to genera and species, and be shorn of any
 > > responsibility for coordinated family-level taxa.
 > 
 > That would be a very nice situation. (Although there'd still be
 > some overlap, since genus-level taxa are open for conversion under
 > the PhyloCode.) We'll have to see how the PhyloCode does, first,
 > though.

I still say that "converting" genera into clades is a category
mistake.  They are much better left as they are.  (Better still would
be a world in which genera had never been any more important than
families and other ranks, that is to say, a world without the
binomial, which is what gives genera their undue influence.)

 _/|_    ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor    <mike@indexdata.com>    http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
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