[Taxacom] Usefulness vs. convenience (Protista)

[Stephen Thorpe]

>What's the paraphyletic group that encompasses this basal tangle?

what I mean is that "basal Bilateria" is the paraphyletic residue from 
Bilateria, and it seems to be very hard if not impossible to split it ("basal 
Bilateria") into monophyletic groups, one of which will be sister to the 
remaining (non-basal) Bilateria. If that is too abstract for you, then let the 
paraphyletic group be called "Platyhelminthes" ...

>Either you digress, or we're talking about different things. I mean *can* be 
>worked out, not necessarily *has* been worked out

to digress is to go somewhere irrelevant to the discussion at hand, but I think 
my point is highly relevant. The context of the discussion is classification, 
not phylogeny. If phylogeneticists just poo poo an existing classification, 
because of paraphyly, but leave it all in limbo, by not presenting a coherent 
alternative, then what is wrong with sticking to the original classification and 
just flagging some taxa as being paraphyletic? Besides, how do you know 
something *can* be worked out unless it *has* been??




________________________________
From: Curtis Clark <lists at curtisclark.org>
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Tue, 21 December, 2010 3:09:36 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Usefulness vs. convenience (Protista)

On 12/19/2010 9:11 PM, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
> >But name me an uncrackable paraphyletic group
> basal Bilateria ... where do Acoela and Nematodermata fit in? 
> Xenoturbellida?

What's the paraphyletic group that encompasses this basal tangle?

> >Certainly Reptilia seems well-cracked
> then please point me to a fully-worked out published Linnean 
> classification which is congruent with the phylogeny (i.e., with 
> mammals and birds as subordinate to the class Reptilia, but still with 
> Linnean ranks) ...

Either you digress, or we're talking about different things. I mean 
*can* be worked out, not necessarily *has* been worked out.

-- 
Curtis Clark                  http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
Director, I&IT Web Development                  +1 909 979 6371
University Web Coordinator, Cal Poly Pomona


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