rankless nomenclature

[Zdenek Skala]

Richard Pyle wrote:
> Does anyone really believe that phylogenetic
> analysis will prove to be a passing fad? That it will disappear
> altogether eventually?

I do.
Phylogenetic analysis can never reach safe grounds - simply
because it deals with a past, which is inherently inobservable as
such. Hence, the resulting trees are severely dependent on our
untestable hypotheses about the phylogeny course. Simple
example to illustrate: All current types of phylogeny reconstruction
assume that phylogeny was generally splitting and include
reticulations only where really obvious. What if the general
phylogeny pattern is reticulation? - I do not think so, but *we have
no tool to decide*! Of course, the picture of phylogeny would
dramatically change, our methods would change etc.; moreover,
one can imagine many such different hypotheses. Thus, again -
phylogenetic systematics of any kind cannot be really  complete in
the strict sense, we never reach "90% confidence about
phylogeny"; we will even never know which % of confidence is
reached. This is intelectually inacceptable on the long run and, in
my opinion, can lead to the search for the more testable taxonomic
principles - some kind of "new phenetics". The study of phylogeny
will certainly continue, but will no longer form a ground for
taxonomy.

To promote nomenclatural stability, we should *decouple* it with
ANY ideology behind as far as possible and make it compatible
with different taxonomic practices. Linne's ideas about the natural
order were quite different from the current ones but his nomeclature
principles work largely unchanged. The purpose of the Code is to
set principles of naming things, not to decide what these things
are. In my opinion, we should make the code open to different
possible taxonomic ideologies and the current status of (e.g.) ICBN
is close to this desire - it only should (and can I believe) proceed
further. The basic reason why not to accept PhyloCode is that it
goes in the opposite direction.
Best!
Zdenek
++++++++++++++++++++++
] Zdenek Skala
] e-mail:
] skala at incoma.cz