Binomial elimination (sigh)

[David B. Wright]

On Sat, 18 Mar 1995, Marco_Bleeker wrote:
> >I suggest sticking to the current binomial system.  Certainly in the group I
> >work on (ants) generic names are very useful and convey lots of information.
> > It's much easier to think in terms of the 300 generic names than it
would
> >be to have 10,000 species names as the basic unit of classification.
>
>   I second this vote. Anyone who works with large numbers of species, often
> uses only genus names in dayly conversation. Because the other party might
> never have heard of the exact same species (name), but could have something
> interesting to report about a related species (of the same genus). And
> because large numbers become only managable when dealt with in groups. This

But there would still be *names* (words, not numbers) to use to refer to
(monophyletic) groups of species.  They just wouldn't be "genus" names,
and this first "level" of group membership would not be embedded into
the name of every species.  It the embedding of these levels or "ranks"
into species names that makes Linnaean taxonomy objectionable, not the
fact that two names are used...

David Wright
dwright at u.washington.edu