[Taxacom] Herbarium sequence revisited

[Ken Kinman]

    I'm not a botanist, but seems to me the best compromise would be 
phylogenetic down to family.  Then perhaps arrange the genera and species 
alphabetically within each family.

     And with the collection arranged in four vaults, one vault could be 
primarily for the monocots (Class Liliopsida), which comprise about 25% of 
the angiosperm diversity.  As for the dicots, the paleodicots would 
obviously come first, but arranging the higher dicots in a linear fashion 
would be a judgment call (since their phylogeny is so "bushy" and somewhat 
less certain relatively speaking).
   ------- Ken Kinman
***********************************
>From: "Chapman, Alex" <alexc at calm.wa.gov.au>
>To: <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
>Subject: [Taxacom] Herbarium sequence revisited
>Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 15:50:35 +0800
>
>
>
>In PERTH, we are in the fortunate position of being able to build a new 
>herbarium facility as the first stage of a new Biodiversity Science Centre.
>Our herbarium currently holds some 650,000 specimens but the new facility 
>will be designed to hold double that.
>
>I know this has been asked before on TAXACOM
>   (see  Lemson (January 2002): 
>http://listserv.nhm.ku.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind0201&L=taxacom&D=1&O=D&F=&S=&P=30627
>    and  Stevens (April 1999): 
>http://listserv.nhm.ku.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind9904&L=taxacom&D=1&O=D&F=&S=&P=7402 
>)
>
>and much informative discussion was had, but I am wondering if attitudes 
>may be changing with the subsequent publication of APG II and then the ATOL 
>project, amongst others.
>
>My interpretation of these previous discussions is that most contributors 
>believed that a systematic sequence (as opposed to alphabetic) was the 
>preferred one if the opportunity arose, however, adoption of APG may be 
>premature (as at January 2002).
>
>In June 2006, my feeling is that the basic ordinal framework is now 
>strongly supported and unlikely to change topology in any radical way.  
>However, as Peter Stevens acknowledged in 1999, "even with the APG system, 
>there are very, very many ways of arranging families in a linear sequence".
>My question is - has anyone attempted to define a linear sequence of 
>families aligned to the APG II ordinal framework (and below) and has it 
>been implemented in a herbarium of reasonable size?  If so, what is the 
>user experience - for both curators and visitors.  If it was considered but 
>rejected as an option, what were the perceived problems (and what system 
>was subsequently adopted)?
>Our team here would value any insights TAXACOM list members may have on 
>this subject.
>
>Cheers,
>Alex
>____
>Alex R. Chapman                   Email: alexc at calm.wa.gov.au