rankless nomenclature

[Doug Yanega]

Richard Pyle wrote:

> For this reason, I envision that nomenclature will generally
>lag behind numenclature, until the numenclature has achieved some sort of
>stable ground.  At that point, the nomenclature can then be changed to
>reflect the numenclature (where appropriate) *once*, rather than flip-flop
>multiple times while the phylogeny is still being worked out.

This is a view which, in all fairness, I think maybe only a vertebrate
systematist could ever envision (and maybe rightly so, from that
perspective) as possible in our lifetimes. However, I submit that the odds
of us ever having anything approaching a complete and stable species-level
phylogeny of even a significant *fraction* of the Arthropoda are roughly
equivalent to the odds we will learn how to build vacation homes inside
black holes in other galaxies. Heck, we haven't even put *names* on an
estimated 80-99% of the extant arthropods, let alone worked out
species-level phylogenies, and H. sapiens will probably be extinct before
we get anywhere close to finishing the task (especially at the rate we're
losing alpha systematists). If we're missing that many species from the
hierarchy, how much faith do you put in our higher-level taxon
circumscriptions? Heck, I don't even think we have a stable idea of what
the circumscription of the Phylum Arthropoda is to *begin* with.
        If the stability (and superiority) of the PhyloCode system is based
on the assumption of stable underlying phylogenies, then it is a pipe dream
to expect it to be superior to the Linnaean system for the majority of
extant taxa, for centuries to come - unless we experience about a
thousand-fold increase in the number of systematists. Richard, if you KNEW
that 95% or so of the world's fish species had yet to be discovered and
described, would you be ready to switch to the PhyloCode tomorrow, or would
you consider it hopelessly premature? Maybe the underlying problem is that
PhyloCode proponents are trying to devise one set of idealized rules for
everything, when the reality is that what may be marginally practical for
one small set of taxa (vertebrates) may never be practical for anything
else. As Utopian visions go, the PhyloCode is fine, but it's not something
*I* will ever be able to use, so don't expect me to adopt it. I'd sooner
become fluent in Esperanto.

Oh, and a while back Philip Cantino wrote:

>I don't understand what Doug means when he says that "in a rankless
>scheme there really is no effective difference between a name and a
>number."

If you have two taxon names, Abcus magna and Defus gloriosa, in a rankless
classification, you have no way of knowing from the names alone whether
those two species are related (they could even be sister species, and A.
magna could be closer to D. gloriosa than to A. magnoides) or in different
Kingdoms. The names may as well be numbers, since they convey no
information about what they are related to, and similar names may not
indicate close relationship. Long live the Genus! ;-)

In the end, I can't shake the overwhelming feeling that all this hubbub
over the PhyloCode and rankless nomenclature, etc., at a time when alpha
systematics is in such dire trouble, is at *best* just so much fiddling
while Rome burns - and at worst *maybe* doing more harm than good.
Infighting is rarely constructive. Then again, that may just be my cynicism
showing.

Peace,


Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521
phone: (909) 787-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
           http://entmuseum9.ucr.edu/staff/yanega.html
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82