[Taxacom] The future of taxonomy

Thu Feb 19 12:13:19 CST 2009

Well, okay, yeah, leaving who funds what why as a question for another time, I see that we have two recent responses to the problem of paraphyly in Drosophila. 

One respondant indicates that he himself has good judgment and cares about what classification represents, and doubtless has much sympathy for evolutionary taxonomy (as opposed to phylogenetic monophyleticism), and attributes what I agree is a moderate, excellent viewpoint to all his relatives, friends, and colleagues. Well, what about that crowd of devils that increasingly happily names fully (phenotypically) cryptic species, genera, and families - splitting perfectly good taxa into evolutionary abstractions characterized by random traits, and which melds perfectly good evolutionary species into portmanteau lumpen-taxa of little use to biodiversity analysis, or anything else? 

The other respondant places trust in the principles of nomenclature to, I think, at least allow taxonomists to resurrect an evolutionary taxonomy. In the first place, changing back from a phylogenetic classification requires destinguishing GOOD changes from the ones solely based on preserving holophyly. This is not a trivial endeavor and I suspect much labor in future years will be wasted on this. Secondly, nomenclature is hidden, merely implied, in phylogenetic classification and it takes work to use it effectively. A published classification that, for instance, does not recognize polar bears (just recognizes brown bears) or the cactus family (just recognizes the portulacca family), cannot be fixed by invoking nomenclature. 

_______________________
Richard H. Zander
Missouri Botanical Garden
PO Box 299
St. Louis, MO 63166 U.S.A.
richard.zander at mobot.org

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Stephen D. Gaimari
Program Supervisor (Entomology) &
Co-Curator, California State Collection of Arthropods

Plant Pest Diagnostics Lab
California Department of Food and Agriculture
3294 Meadowview Road
Sacramento, CA 95832-1448, USA

916-262-1131 (tel.)
916-262-1190 (fax)
sgaimari at cdfa.ca.gov
http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/phpps/ppd/staff/sgaimari.html 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>>> "Richard Zander" <Richard.Zander at mobot.org> 2/19/2009 7:54 AM >>>
The comment of Ken Kinman, Karl, is, I think, a general comment about attitudes of phylogeneticists towards ancestor-descendant relationships, which their sister-group methodology actually demonstrates quite nicely through the misunderstood phenomenon of "massive homoplasy" on a molecular tree.

You neglected to explain the position of the U.S.-based systematists regarding NOT splitting. Are they in favor of lumping many of the taxa into one monophyletic species to preserve monophyly? Or are they willing to entertain BOTH sister-group and ancestor-descendant relationships in their taxonomy because they are either responsible or have a sense of shame?

_______________________
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 Karl Magnacca
Sent: Thu 2/19/2009 4:32 AM
To: TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] The future of taxonomy

On Thu, February 19, 2009 3:24 am, Kenneth Kinman wrote:
>       Yes, I agree that it is "importunate homage" to strictly cladistic
> nomenclature, and also that wonderful opportunities are therefore being
> missed.  But this is not too surprising given that so much funding
> passes through a few narrow channels in Washington D.C., and "strict
> cladism" has been rewarded for decades through those channels.  Not at
> all surprising that government-backed projects like NCBI, Tree of Life,
> and so on, perpetuate the myth that paraphyly is bad, because those who
> perpetuate it are continually rewarded for doing so.

Considering that nearly all of the people pushing hard to split up
Drosophila are 1) not from or working in the US, and/or 2) not
systematists/phylogeneticists - whereas most of those I know who are
strongly opposed to it are NSF or USDA-funded systematists (along with
many who are not, of course) - this is a remarkably absurd comment.

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