Farewell to Species - reticulation

[Curtis Clark]

At 05:43 PM 00.02.05 +0100, Hubert Turner wrote:
>Everybody nows what a reptile or a dicot looks like!

I agree that it is a mistake to force nomenclature to strictly follow
phylogeny, but I wonder, is Archaeopteryx a bird or a reptile? Is
Archaeopteris a pteridophyte or a spermatophyte? For that matter, is
Amborella a monocot or a dicot? Just because we "recognize" a grouping,
that doesn't necessarily make it useful. There used to be a phylum
Vermes--everyone can recognize a worm. Where is it now?

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Curtis Clark                  http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
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