Fwd: Re: rankless nomenclature

[Philip Cantino]

I wrote:

>   >         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.
>


Una Smith wrote:

>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 Barry Roth pointed out, the name of a species under the Linnaean
system is its entire binomial, not just its specific epithet.  In
support of this view, note that two identical binomials based on
different types are considered homonyms under the ICBN, ICZN, etc.,
while two epithets based on different types are not homonyms if they
are combined with different genus names.

Binomials (species names) change whenever species are transferred
from one genus to another.  A common cause of such generic
realignments is new information about interspecific phylogenetic
relationships.  Thus, I stand by my original statement about the
disadvantage of the Linnaean binomial system.

Phil


Philip D. Cantino
Professor and Chair
Department of Environmental and Plant Biology
Ohio University
Athens, OH 45701-2979
U.S.A.

Phone: (740) 593-1128; 593-1126
Fax: (740) 593-1130
e-mail: cantino at ohio.edu