saprophytes/Animalia/Plantae

[B. J. Tindall]

Ken Kinman wrote:
>Curtis,
>      I'm afraid I do have a big problem with "Animalia".  It is an archaic
>and confusing term which I do not use.  Kingdom Metazoa is precise and
>hopefully noone would mistakenly include Giardia or Parmecium as metazoans.
>The same goes for "Plantae", and I see little advantage in using it when
>Kingdom Metaphyta is unambiguous.
It is not surprising that some to the taxonomic concepts which date back to
Haeckel are overdue for revision!! There used to be a time when "bacteria"
were not only monera, but also part of the protists and bacteriologists
often worked in botany departments or were in medical departments. It is a
case of putting square pegs in round holes.

>Where we make major cuts in the tree of life may be somewhat arbitrary......
Exactly, but try telling that to certain groups and you get strange looks.

>      I was rechecking my notes and the cellular slime molds arose
>independently in at least four different lineages.  Besides Dictyosteliida
>and Acrasida, there are also the Copromyxids (Class Lobosea) and Fonticulids
>(Class Filosea).   Cellular slime molds are all superficially similar as
>aggregative amoebae, but this is simply convergence.
....or is it parallelism?

>On the other hand, Bacteriology and Zoology have some very serious
>misconceptions to work through in the years to come.
Tell me more!
Brian


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