: Real species and ideology

[Curtis Clark]

At 23:48 2004-04-20, Ron Gatrelle wrote:
>resisting the urge to get nude and roll in the grass :-)

Don't they have chiggers in your neck of the woods?

>Nice question as every man made taxonomic rank , one by one, is each a
>taxon.   So who has the right to _declare_ one groups of taxa (say
>sub-genera) are not "real" and require the rest of us to get in
>mental-lock-step?   And by what brilliant logic are, sub-orders,
>sub-families, and sub-genera all valid but not sub-species?

Clades are "real". Subspecies can't be clades; if they were, they'd be species.


--
Curtis Clark                  http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
Web Coordinator, Cal Poly Pomona                 +1 909 979 6371
Professor, Biological Sciences                   +1 909 869 4062