rankless nomenclature

[Una Smith]

On Tue, 10 Oct 2000, Philip Cantino wrote:

>The draft PhyloCode (http://www.ohiou.edu/phylocode/) does not cover
>species, but it is the intent of those preparing the PhyloCode to
>expand it to cover species names in the future.

...and...

>         New information about the phylogenetic relationships of a
>group of species will not entail name changes, as new information
>about generic boundaries does in the Linnaean system.  This may well
>be appealing to the many users of species names (ecologists,
>foresters, horticulturalists, etc.) who get fed up with the endless
>species name changes under the current system.

The names of species change when their circumscriptions change or they
get moved to a genus where a similar epithet has already been used for
a different species.  Otherwise, new phylogenetic relationships do not
entail name changes (or am I missing something big here???).  So, the
draft PhyloCode does nothing for the "problem" that most "users" have
with the current "Linnaean" system.  As long as it overlooks species-
level re-circumscriptions, the draft PhyloCode seems (to me) not ready
for serious public debate.

(Registration is a separate issue and I wish it were treated as such,
not rolled into the PhyloCode proposal.)

        Una Smith               una.smith at yale.edu

        Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
        Yale University
        New Haven, CT  06520-8106