Fwd: Re: PhyloCode prefix/suffix?

[Philip Cantino]

Rich Pyle asked:

>What was the specific objection to the required symbol?
>

As I recall, the primary objection to a mandatory symbol was the
"second class citizen" issue that Barry Roth brought up.  People
opposed marking PhyloCode names with a symbol unless names governed
by rank-based nomenclature are also marked in some way, which of
course the PhyloCode has no control over.  My response was that the
symbol could be viewed as a "value-added" symbol indicating that the
taxon bearing the name is necessarily monophyletic, something you
can't be sure of with names under the current system.  However,the
majority didn't buy this argument.

I also voiced the more important argument that there would be
widespread concern that having two codes operating simultaneously
would result in confusion, and that, even if one doesn't think that
this concern is well founded, having distinguishable names will
hasten acceptance of the PhyloCode.  I don't recall for sure why this
argument was rejected, but I think one of the responses was that we
shouldn't base long-term decision about the form of PhyloCode names
on speculations about the initial reactions of the systematics
community, since we couldn't predict with certainty what those
reactions would be.  Now that I have some evidence to back up my
speculation, I may be in a better position to revisit this argument.

The symbol I proposed at the time was the Greek letter phi (for
phylogenetic), but I much prefer the exclamation mark.  The principal
problem with using phi is that it is not present on keyboards and
takes some searching to find in common word-processing programs; it
may not even be possible to make the phi symbol in some programs.

Phil


Philip D. Cantino
Professor and Chair
Department of Environmental and Plant Biology
Ohio University
Athens, OH 45701-2979
U.S.A.

Phone: (740) 593-1128; 593-1126
Fax: (740) 593-1130
e-mail: cantino at ohio.edu