rankless nomenclature?

[Ken Kinman]

Philip and others,
     I understand why you think the Linnean System is a "nightmare" when
trying to name all these newly discovered clades.  But for me (and many
others), the real nightmare is the very idea of formally naming all these
new clades.  The Kinman System was devised to explore alternative ways of
storing cladistic information which are less drastic and less destabilizing.
     For instance, although I informally recognize a dinosaur-bird clade
(through the coding), the synapomorphies for that clade appear weaker (and
more prone to homoplasy) than are the synapomorphies which unite each of
it's three traditional components (which are formally recognized):
   3  Ornithischiformes
   4  Saurischiformes
  _a_ {{Class Avea}}
        or if you don't like standardized endings:
   3  Ornithischia
   4  Saurischia
  _a_ {{Class Aves}}
And before you complain that Saurischians are paraphyletic here, Saurischia
is made holophyletic in an informational sense by adding another {{Class
Aves}} marker at family level, coded as sister group to Dromaeosauridae.  I
call these semi-paraphyletic groups, which is a way for cladists and
eclecticists to have it both ways, so that a single universal classification
is possible.
      Systematists can still argue about the coding sequences (which will
reflect different phylogenies and new information), and the rest of world
can generally ignore the coding and have a relatively stable taxonomy.
     The point is that we should be recognizing fewer "formal" taxa, not
more!!  And the ones that are recognized should have demonstrated their
stability over time.
       There is lots of controversy still about the relationships of
theropod dinosaurs.  The families tend to be relative stable (and I
recognize them), but some families like Troodontidae, Therizinosauridae, and
others jump around alot from phylogeny to phylogeny (and theropods are an
intensively studied group with lots of information, unlike many other
groups).
      If you want to put Troodontidae in the "Paraves" clade (as Sereno
does), I would do it like this:
   1  Dromaeosauridae
   B  Troodontidae
   2  {{Aves}}
Or perhaps make Troodontidae outgroup to the other two:
   1  Troodontidae
   2  Dromaeosauridae
   3  {{Aves}}
Others think Troodontidae isn't even close to them, and their sequence of
families would be ordered and coded differently.  Genera not yet assigned to
families can be treated as plesions.  The point is everyone pretty much
agrees on what constitutes Family Troodontidae, but not what constitutes
many of these clades between family and ordinal level.  Code them and refer
to them informally and you will not have the hierarchical instability
("house of cards") messing up and confusing the formal nomenclature.
                      ------Ken Kinman
P.S.  And best of all, we won't have the horror of two battling systems of
Codes (and they will clash eventually).  I would much rather be working on a
unified BioCode, making it as cladisto-eclectically friendly as possible,
rather than add another code to the mix.  The either-or mentality of the
last 30 years, that cladistic and eclectic classifications have to be
totally incompatible and separate, needs to end.
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