Farewell to species (but not yet!)

Curtis Clark jcclark at CSUPOMONA.EDU
Fri Feb 4 19:53:44 CST 2000


At 11:30 AM 00.02.04 -0500, Richard Zander wrote:
>We already have the equivalent of a "fixed uninomial." It's the basionym.
>It's pretty stable.

I think this points to the crux of the matter. The basionym is perfect,
until someone assumes that it is conveying information about affinity.
Paraphyletic groups are fine, until someone assume they provide information
about kinship. One advantage of an entirely new system is that it carries
no baggage of previous modes of interpretation. Whether that is enough to
justify the change is another issue.

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Curtis Clark                  http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
Biological Sciences Department             Voice: (909) 869-4062
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