Use of the rank of forma

[Barry Roth]

Diversity is a pattern; phylogeny is one process
contributing to that pattern.  Depending on the
taxonomist, the practice of taxonomy pays more or less
attention to the process.  As I said, whether or not a
taxon is monophyletic determines whether or not it can
be used for certain operations such as predicting the
distribution of undiscovered characters (I should have
said, character-states ;^]).  For the goal "to learn
as much as possible about the diversity," which I
wholeheartedly support, estimating the underlying
phylogeny is an important task.
Cheers,
Barry
--- Zdenek Skala <Zdenek.Skala at INCOMA.CZ> wrote:
> Barry Roth wrote:
> >Or, more generally, to give names to units that are
> >not conceived as monophyletic.  At least with the
> hope
> >that such names will designate entities about which
> >one can make the same kinds of predictions that
> >monophyletic units allow one to make -- e.g., that
> all
> >of its members will share other, known or
> >undiscovered, characters.
>
> Taxonomy, even the modern one in my opinion, is not
> about the
> phylogeny but about the diversity; phylogenetic
> hypothesis is only
> one tool to reasonably describe this diversity. If
> so - why to discard
> the infraspecific variation from the taxonomic
> scope?
> Of course, infraspecific taxa cannot be monophyletic
> by definition -
> not because they have no common origin, but because
> the
> operational unit of phylogeny in phylogenetic
> analysis is species.
> To apply the monophyly criterion to taxa describing
> individual
> variation is simply nonsense, but this apply to
> subspecies as well.
> Taxonomy is here to learn as much as possible about
> the diversity
> and "variants that do not have a discrete
> geographical or ecological
> range" often (not always) contribute much to this
> knowledge.

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