[Taxacom] (no subject)

[Richard Zander]

"Our hypotheses of phylogenetic historical patterns" is not a substitute for "our hypotheses of evolution." Somewhere along the line the two terms have been confounded/conflated/confused. 
 
_______________________
Richard H. Zander
Missouri Botanical Garden
PO Box 299
St. Louis, MO 63166 U.S.A.
richard.zander at mobot.org
 

________________________________

From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu on behalf of Richard Pyle
Sent: Thu 4/2/2009 12:54 AM
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] (no subject)



My comment was that when most people think of a "classification", they think
of nomenclature.  Specifically, most people think of a hierarchical series
of nested groups, labelled with Linnaean-style names at various ranks. The
problem comes when some people want to use the hierarchy of names to
represent strictly monophyletic groups; whereas others prefer a more
"relaxed" view of nomenclature as a tool for more general communication --
driven largely (but not necessarily exclusively) by our hypotheses of
phylogenetic historical patterns, influenced also by considerations of
nomenclatural stability and various other factors that have been discussed
on this list ad nauseum.