rankless nomenclature

[Zdenek Skala]

Z. Skala:
> > 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. ..etc.
Barry Roth:
> 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.
[snipped]
Of course not. Please read my message again:
>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.
This is my main point - nomenclature should not reflect phylogeny
but should be able to reflect different taxonomic approaches to be
stable. "Linnean-type" nomenclature (probably) is (or will be) able
to do it. I was not writing about *system* (and perhaps need not
stress that Linne was not a phylogeneticist :-)
Perhaps all this discussion miss one important point: what should
nomenclature (names) DO? In my personal opinion, names are
here for easy *communication*, not for information storage. Storage
of information is the job of a system (taxonomy). Hence, the
names should unequivocally refer to "things" and be stable. The
contents of the "things" is a matter of the taxonomy (descriptions,
cladograms, etc.). I feel that the proponents of the PhyloCode do
not fully agree with this distinction and here can be the root of all
the disagreement.
Best!
Zdenek
++++++++++++++++++++++
] Zdenek Skala
] e-mail:
] skala at incoma.cz