confusing names

[Ken Kinman]

     Archaea is a genus of spider, and Archaea is also Woese's domain name
(a junior synonym of both Archaebacteria and Metabacteria).
     Of course, this is not the real source of confusion with respect to the
Domain name Archaea.  It's just totally inaccurate (see Ernst Mayr, Sept.
1998 in PNAS), and much worse, it continues to lead microbiologists into
using "Archaea" as an outgroup to Eubacteria (and using an "ingroup" as an
"outgroup" is one of the dumbest things one can do in a cladistic analysis).
     All the misinformation this is causing will be highly embarrassing to
microbiology at some point in the future.  The only thing it accomplishes is
to prop up the mistaken notion that the earliest life forms (or at least the
cenancestor or LUCA of extant life forms) was highly thermophilic, and
future scientists can have a good laugh that such a notion was taken
seriously for over 20 years.
                     ------Ken Kinman

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