[Taxacom] Addendum to my last post on Kingdom Protista

[Stephen Thorpe]

Hi David, and other taxacomers,

> Is your interest in these matters professional?  It is clearly substantial.

Thanks for the compliment! Actually, my interest is more  
"pathological" than professional! I have Asperger's Syndrome, one of  
the symptoms of which is "intense interests" (=euphemism for  
obsessions), often in science, so these matters just "appeal to me"  
for their own sake. Think of me as a taxonomic pitbull with my teeth  
firmly sunk into your leg! Some people misunderstand me, and some  
people REALLY misunderstand me!

> I have been thinking about trying to build an on-line editing  
> environment to let people assemble a comprehensive taxonomy - but  
> such a structure needs some rules and some moderation so there is at  
> least a consistent logic.  My view is that such a system must  
> accommodate many points of view.  Does this have any interest

A mighty fine idea, but what you describe sounds to me exactly like  
something called Wikispecies! I have made a preliminary start at  
higher eukaryote classification, see:

http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Eukaryota

I haven't got much further yet than just assembling relevant recent  
literature and links, and making a very preliminary choice of who to  
follow. The good thing is that there is an associated talk page (blank  
at present) where people can comment and alternative options can be  
expounded and discussed.

What do you think about Cavalier-Smith's primary division of  
eukaryotes into bikonts and unikonts? He may actually be allowing for  
the possibility that a few small groups don't fit into either  
category, and may nonly be claiming that the vast majority of  
eukaryotes are one or the other. The main problem I see with  
Cav.-Smith is that he is a bit of a "ranker" (!), in that he tries to  
assign ranks to clades in a basically Linnean fashion, and the result  
gets rather messy and inconsistent...

Cheers,

Stephen



Quoting David Patterson <dpatterson at eol.org>:

> Stephen
>
> Agreed, the retention of ranks, which have no objective meaning,  
> just gets us all tangled up in an irrational mess.    None of the  
> molecular phylogenies retain ranks, and classifications that I have  
> worked on, say in microscope.mbl.edu or eutree.lifedesks.org lack them
>
> My larger concern is that many of the 'taxa' are not given objective  
> definitions, so we have terms like 'Rhizaria' or 'Amoebozoa' which  
> mean very different things at different times and to different people.
>
> I cannot understand Ken's approach to classifications.
>
> Is your interest in these matters professional?  It is clearly  
> substantial.  I have been thinking about trying to build an on-line  
> editing environment to let people assemble a comprehensive taxonomy  
> - but such a structure needs some rules and some moderation so there  
> is at least a consistent logic.  My view is that such a system must  
> accommodate many points of view.  Does this have any interest
>
> David Patterson
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Barry Roth" <barry_roth at yahoo.com>
> To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 12:41:33 AM (GMT-0500) America/New_York
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Addendum to my last post on Kingdom Protista
>
> Yes, and to the extent that the plan would be rank-driven, it is a  
> good idea NOT to encourage the ICZN to extend its scope above names  
> of the traditional family-group.
>  
> Barry Roth
>
> --- On Tue, 7/21/09, Stephen Thorpe <s.thorpe at auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
>
>
> From: Stephen Thorpe <s.thorpe at auckland.ac.nz>
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Addendum to my last post on Kingdom Protista
> To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu, kennethkinman at webtv.net
> Date: Tuesday, July 21, 2009, 8:33 PM
>
>
> I really do think that the time has come to let go of fondly held 
> Linnean obsessions of categorical ranks for taxa above family-group. 
> Surely "superkingdom" is a self-contradiction - analogous to 
> "supercosmos", or "superinfinite", or something! I can't see any 
> alternative than to simply use unranked clade names, though one could 
> perhaps SELECTIVELY label SOME as being equivalent to traditional 
> categories? So Eukaryota would look something like this:
>
> Eukaryota
> Amoebozoa - Opisthokonta - Excavata - Plantae (kingdom) ...
>
> and Opisthokonta would go something like:
>
> Opisthokonta
> Animalia (kingdom) - Fungi (kingdom) - ... [add various unranked 
> "protist" clades]
>
> Just a thought!
>
> Stephen
>
>
>
> Quoting Kenneth Kinman <kennethkinman at webtv.net>:
>
>> P.S.  I meant to say Superphyla (not Superkingdoms) Excavata, Plantae,
>> and Chromalveolata sensu lato (SAR).  Whether you want to call the
>> second one Superphylum Plantae or Superphylum Archeplastida is up to the
>> individual, but the term Plantae is far more familiar.
>>           --------Ken
>>
>>
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