nomenclature

[Doug Yanega]

Curtis Clark wrote:

>The only
>reasons they can't coexist are reasons of personality, not of logic.

Not so. If someone publishes clade names for Phylocode purposes, then they
will very often satisfy the ICZN/ICBN guidelines for being validly
published - and forever thereafter, even if they violate various code
provisions, they will still need to be shoehorned into the traditional
system, if only to declare them all nomina nuda or whatever. In other
words, Linnaean taxonomists would be forced to treat many (if not most)
Phylocode names in their publications, but the reverse won't be true.
That's an incredibly unfair asymmetry, and a terrible burden of excess
names for us to contend with. The only way the two codes could coexist is
if the ICZN/ICBN were dramatically revised in such a way that there wasn't
even the POTENTIAL for confusion of names produced in the different
contexts. This will never happen. In the end, the Phylocode cannot be
allowed to exist if the rest of us are to go about business as usual. It
*IS* a contest.

Sincerely,


Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521
phone: (909) 787-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
           http://entmuseum9.ucr.edu/staff/yanega.html
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82