Fwd: Re: rankless nomenclature

[Richard Jensen]

On Sat, 14 Oct 2000, Philip Cantino wrote:

>
> Phylogenetic names fall into a hierarchy because the evolutionary
> process produces a natural hierarchy of groups.  However, the
> position that a taxon holds within the hierarchy does not affect its
> name in phylogenetic nomenclature, whereas it does in the rank-based
> system.  Thus, phylogenetic nomenclature separates nomenclature from
> classification to a greater extent than the rank-based system does.

I know this must be covered in PhyloCode, but I have not read the code
carefully.  If there is no link between names and ranks, then how does one
know, when one sees a clade name, what its position is in the
hierarchy?  If the example provided in the paper by Pleijel
(1999. Syst. Biol. 48: 755-789) reflects the way things might work,
then I find it especially cumbersome: in his example, a terminal taxon,
which may or may not be a "species," is referred to simply as
Flexuous.  To identify the clades that Flexuous belongs to, the name is
written as Flexuous (Ophiodromus, Hesionidae), the clades being more
inclusive left to write.  So, if I follow his convention correctly, his
taxon Lyonsi must be written as Lyonsi (Crassichaetae, Heteropodarke,
Ophiodromus, Hesionidae).  There is nothing here to signify rank; the
spellings are apparantly retained simply by priority.

Is the above example an accurate view of the way the PhyloCode would or
should work?

Dick

Richard J. Jensen      |   E-MAIL: rjensen at saintmarys.edu
Dept. of Biology       |   TELEPHONE: 219-284-4674
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