rankless nomenclature
Barry Roth
barry_roth at YAHOO.COM
Mon Oct 16 08:30:23 CDT 2000
--- Zdenek Skala <Zdenek.Skala at INCOMA.CZ> wrote:
> 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".
And what, please, is it that we have confidence in
when using the Linnean system? Surely not that it is
a representation of the underlying phylogeny. Not
even that it documents a parsimonious estimate of that
phylogeny. I think the most that can be said is that,
taken as a whole, canonical systematics documents a
history of choices, by numerous workers using numerous
(and often inexplicit) criteria for grouping taxa. It
takes a great leap of faith to believe that such a
classification will be optimal for predicting the
distribution of previously undiscovered
character-states.
Barry Roth
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