5 Kingdoms

[Frederick W. Schueler]

Bill Shear wrote:
>
> I've always been bothered by the "Kingdom" Protoctista
>  It seems clear that the three multicellular kingdoms arose from
> protoctistan ancestors, so some protoctist phyla are more closely
> related to multicell organisms than to other protoctistans.
>
> If we recognize Fungi, Plantae and Animalia, then Protoctista has to be
> broken up into gosh knows how many kingdoms.

* what one might call 'extreme paraphyly.' The only solution would seem
to be to recognize kingdoms as in some sense ecological/trophic
classifications, but that would formally re-introduce the idea of
phenetic difference, and who knows what consequences might flow from
that...

fred schueler.
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