My hot take: the PhyloCode is a decent, if not necessarily the best solutionÂto what were real problems plaguing biological systematics back in 1986, when the core set of ideas behind it first emerged. However, over the intervening third of a century, these have becomeÂnon-isssues, due to factors like phylogenies becoming ubiquitous, and people finding new ways of utilizing them (with the whole field of phylogenetic comparative methods only taking off after Felsenstein's 1985 seminal paper). Today, the PhyloCode is a decent, if not necessarily the best solution to problems that don't exist. As such, its implementation will have no impact whatsoever. It will be occasionally discussed in grad student seminars as a thought-provoking but clearly impractical and obsolete idea â just like it was before Phylonyms got published.
El vie., 12 de jun. de 2020 a la(s) 23:35, Tim Williams (
tijawi@gmail.com) escribiÃ:
Paul P <turtlecroc@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Phylogenetic nomenclature has its own set of problems. For example, things like "the clade originating in the most recent common
> ancestor of A and B" becomes a mess if A or B turns out not to belong to that clade.
I thought, by definition, that A and B had to be part of the clade.
> And the termite example given in the press release in support of the Phylocode is silly--termites could simply have been demoted to
> suborder or infraorder instead of family.
I'm entirely comfortable with this level of 'demotion'. Elsewhere in
invertebrate paleontology, there are more extreme examples: whole
phyla (such as Pogonophora and Vestimentifera) have been 'demoted' to
'family' level (in this case Siboglinidae, within annelid worms).
Then again, I'd be quite happy to see all Linnaean ranks done away
with - which (as the press release makes clear) is the intention of
phylogenetic nomenclature.
Best,
--
David ÄernÃ