[Taxacom] Felsenstein lecture

[Karl Magnacca]

On Wed, December 3, 2008 11:51 pm, Bob Mesibov wrote:
> He did this in his 2004 book 'Inferring Phylogenies' and again here. His
> position (I can't call it an argument) has an element in common with
> what Richard Zander has been saying: classifications need not reflect
> all the messy details of lineage history. (Big oversimplification there,
> of course.)

Actually, it seemed to me from the talk itself that his attitude was
that classification above the level of species names didn't matter to
him for creating his phylogenies, therefore he didn't care about it. 
While I don't necessarily blame him for taking himself out of the
nomenclature/Phylocode argument (which he mentioned as part of the
context) when he doesn't have a personal stake in it, it came off
sounding very self-centered - he doesn't care about higher-level
classification, and it isn't important for phylogenetics, therefore it
isn't important at all.

Karl
=====================
Karl Magnacca
Postdoctoral Researcher
Department of Zoology
Trinity College, Dublin 2
Ireland