[Taxacom] Animalia or Metazoa?

Fri Jul 24 02:24:59 CDT 2009

Yes, but we wouldn't want to rename Tree of Life as "Google's Greatest  
Hits", would we???? :)

S

Quoting Tony.Rees at csiro.au:

> "current usage" examples:
>
> - Animalia - currently 5,810,000 hits on Google
>
> - Metazoa - currently 1,240,000
>
> - "Tony Rees" - a paltry 18,900 (and that is mainly motorcyclists  
> and footballers, I don't appear till #19...)
>
> Actually, Metazoa is higher than I expected :)
>
> Cheers - Tony
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stephen Thorpe [mailto:s.thorpe at auckland.ac.nz]
> Sent: Friday, 24 July 2009 5:12 PM
> To: Rees, Tony (CMAR, Hobart); Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: RE: [Taxacom] Animalia or Metazoa?
>
> OK, that's nice and clear. I personally prefer Animalia, so I like
> your message! For one thing, sponges have always been considered as
> animals, but I'm not quite sure when they became honorary metazoans?!
> By the way, I can't see any reason why the name Animalia would be any
> more ill defined than Metazoa, except only that it doesn't mean much
> etymologically (but then how much more can 'higher animal' mean, if
> 'animal' lacks much meaning?) Now all we have to do is convince all
> those who use such terms as "Kingdom Metazoa" - yuck!
> Gives a whole new meaning to "save the animals"! :)
> Cheers,
> Stephen
>
> Quoting Tony.Rees at csiro.au:
>
>> OK, mixed messages probably - I am saying that for a long time
>> "Animalia" has excluded protozoa in most authoritative, high
>> acceptance schemes (notably Whittaker, Margulis, and variants
>> thereof, all the way back to Haeckel). Back in the 30s-50s one
>> author (Copeland) used "Metazoa" for the same concept but that is in
>> fact a different issue. If you (or someone's) argument against
>> "Animalia" is the fact that it is ill defined, I would say that is
>> not so. If you then wish to argue the toss for Animalia versus
>> Metazoa, I would not venture an opinion except that Copeland used
>> Metazoa, Whittaker and Margulis both preferred Animalia and it seems
>> to me that this is the more widespread current usage (though as
>> ever, I could be wrong).
>>
>> Regards - Tony
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Stephen Thorpe [mailto:s.thorpe at auckland.ac.nz]
>> Sent: Friday, 24 July 2009 4:51 PM
>> To: Rees, Tony (CMAR, Hobart); Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>> Subject: RE: [Taxacom] Animalia or Metazoa?
>>
>> 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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>>>
>>>
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