rankless nomenclature

[Una Smith]

Phil Cantino 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.


Phil Cantino wrote:

>As Barry Roth pointed out, the name of a species under the Linnaean
>system is its entire binomial, not just its specific epithet.

Yes, I know.  I should have wrote the *epithet* part of the binomial
changes.  The genus part may change too, per phylogenetic evidence.


>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.

This is *one* of several reasons why species names change.  But what
about the other reasons?  I don't disagree that the binomial system
has this disadvantage (assuming it is a disadvantage), but the draft
PhyloCode doesn't (yet) get around it.

        Una Smith               una.smith at yale.edu

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