?rule of three?

[Geoff Read]

> The distribution of the taxa-within-taxa (species within a genus,
> genera within a family...) number generally follow the "hollow"
> ("Willis") curve, i.e. the most frequent are monotypic genera, less
> frequent genera with two species and so on ...

Presumably this includes  the hordes of informationally-meaningless
genera names that  are doomed junior synonyms and thus never gather
more species? Not to mention the indeterminable.  A lot of 'noise'
accumulates in 250 years of nomenclature.

As for the power of human memory - just wait for a uninominal system to
gain sway and give it a good workout!


--
  Geoff Read <g.read at niwa.cri.nz>