Fwd: Re: rankless nomenclature

[Thomas Lammers]

At 08:39 AM 10/13/00 -0500, Dick Jensen wrote:

>I argued, I thought, reasonably that phenetic and cladistic
>classifications, which have different goals, could exist side-by-side,
>simply because they are two different views of the same
>information.

Couldn't agree more.  Some questions are best addressed by the former ("Can
we recognize morphologically discrete groups of populations within this
species complex?"), others by the latter ("What have been the patterns of
evolution among the genera of this family?").  But they can co-exsist
because both express themselves nomenclaturally via the ICBN.  If each had
its own Code of Nomenclature, the division between would be wholly
unbridgeable.



Thomas G. Lammers, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor and Curator of the Herbarium (OSH)
Department of Biology and Microbiology
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
Oshkosh, Wisconsin 54901-8640 USA

e-mail:       lammers at uwosh.edu
phone:      920-424-7085
fax:           920-424-1101

Plant systematics; classification, nomenclature, evolution, and
biogeography of the Campanulaceae s. lat.
-----------------------------------------------------------
"Today's mighty oak is yesterday's nut that stood his ground."
                                                 -- Anonymous