[Taxacom] Animalia or Metazoa?

[Stephen Thorpe]

Tony: I don't understand the logical structure of your argument. Are  
you arguing for Animalia, for Metazoa, or saying that it doesn't  
matter? I don't really see the relevance in citing some historical  
publications - the fact remains that today, some taxonomists think we  
should all use Metazoa, and others think we should all use Animalia. I  
am trying to get a handle on the terms of this dispute...
Regards,
Stephen

Quoting Tony.Rees at csiro.au:

> Stephen, you write:
>
> "It just leaves open my initial question about
> whether Metazoa or Animalia is the best name for the clade left over
> when you remove the old "Protozoa" from the old "Animalia"."
>
> As I attempted to point out, in the three most influential systems  
> published over the last 100+ years (Haeckel, Whittaker, Margulis),  
> it is a non-issue: Animalia and Protozoa (or Protictista) are  
> already treated as distinct entities. In fact Copeland was also  
> doing so in his 4-kingdom scheme(s) too in the 1930s through 1950s  
> (refer the Leedale paper previously cited for details and reproduced  
> scheme), which I omitted to mention, although he uses the name  
> "Metazoa" (I should probably not have said that).
>
> Regards - Tony
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu  
> [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Stephen  
> Thorpe
> Sent: Friday, 24 July 2009 4:31 PM
> To: kennethkinman at webtv.net; Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Animalia or Metazoa?
>
> Thanks Ken - that clarifies for me current thinking on the
> phylogenetic relationships between sponges and the rest of the, er,
> Metazoa (?=Animalia). It just leaves open my initial question about
> whether Metazoa or Animalia is the best name for the clade left over
> when you remove the old "Protozoa" from the old "Animalia". Opinion
> seems to be divided. Names with typification go with the type, so you
> can use the same name for very different taxonomic concepts, provided
> only that the concept includes the type. Names without typification
> are trickier. If you prefer to use the name Metazoa, then you think
> that the name should change if the concept changes, but it doesn't
> have to be that way. There is good reason for arguing that since your
> Metazoa includes all the "typical" animals in the popular sense, we
> should still use the name Animalia for it, and so Protozoa were
> removed from Animalia when it was discovered that they [Protozoa]
> weren't in fact animals. It's a semantic issue, rather than a
> scientific one, but it does have implications for classification
> (which is a mixture of science and semantics)...
>
> By the way, imagine the uproar at a strictly cladistic
> reclassification of Animalia (or Metazoa) if it does turn out that the
> sister taxon to Eumetazoa is just some subclade of calcareous sponges!
>
> Stephen
>
> Quoting Kenneth Kinman <kennethkinman at webtv.net>:
>
>> Stephen,
>>       Kingdom Metazoa = Phylum Porifera (sponges) + Eumetazoa (all the
>> other phyla).  The only question these days is whether the sister group
>> of Eumetazoa is all of crown group Porifera or some subclade thereof.
>> Many researchers believe the latter, and that Eumetazoa evolved
>> specifically from the calcareous sponges, which would make the crown
>> group Porifera definitely paraphyletic (and even the crown group
>> calcareous sponges could easily be paraphyletic as well).
>>        The sponges themselves almost certainly evolved from
>> choanoflagellates, making the latter paraphyletic (as well as the
>> Protozoa as a whole).  The names are thus perfect reflections of what
>> they are evolutionarily.  Protozoa means "first animals", and their
>> descendants Metazoa ("higher animals").  Makes perfect sense to me.
>>      Animalia (in the sense of Protozoa + Metazoa; first animals +
>> higher animals) is also paraphyletic with respect to the photosynthetic
>> protists when they acquired plastids.  Metazoa on the other hand is a
>> clade, unless you believe those old theories that Porifera evolved from
>> choanoflagellates, and Eumetazoa evolved from some other group of
>> Protozoa.
>>        ----------Ken
>>
>>
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