Real taxa => Ranking

[Geoff Read]

> > In biogeography, taxa of different ranks have been utilized together to
> > make biogeographic predictions about geology. Perhaps that means the
> > different ranks held some kind of objectivity that connected them to the real
> > world, or perhaps it just shows that it really does not matter.
>
> My suspicion is the latter.

In similar vein there is an index used in marine community studies called
taxonomic distinctiveness. It approximates genetic relatedness by taxonomic
relatedness as subjectively represented by traversing the taxonomic ranks.
This is very artificial, but may be useful when restricted to a particular
phylum, or when the same group of people have done the ids for each community
being compared!

Warwick, R.M.; Clarke, K.R. (2001). Practical measures of marine biodiversity
based on relatedness of species. Oceanography and Marine Biology: an Annual
Review 39: 207-231.

--
  Geoff Read <g.read at niwa.co.nz>
  http://www.annelida.net/