[Taxacom] New lizard species

[Dan Lahr]

Kim brings up a good point (again).

There is no escape, molecular data and the insights they enable are
just going to increase. However, the ICZN and ICBN, in my view, are
not completely incompatible with these kind of data. After all,
despite some dispute, both methods are indeed describing attributes of
organisms - the description based on a tree analysis adds another
layer of complexity, but how much is this different from a principal
component analysis?

Stephen Thorpe's interpretation for instance is a valid one (which I
agree with by the way), although not the "right" interpretation in the
current commissioner's views, and that is ok, it is the reason we have
commissioners. His view is valid in the sense that the work is indeed
describing attributes for these organisms. Could they have done a
better job at describing these attributes? Probably, but the principle
that their work is describing organismal attributes is still there.
There is nothing fundamentally different in morphological versus
molecular interpretations, and although the argument that the lizard
papers insights come from populational attributes is valid, most
morphological interpretations are also referring to populations not
single individuals, as has been pointed out.

The Codes are paramount in promoting stability and have been the best
solution we've had for more than a hundred years (is it 200 yet?). I
know there have been a few arguments in this listserv about the
Phylocode, but I was wandering if anybody brought up the fact that the
Phylocode relies on the current phylogenetic paradigm to describe
lineages, and if tomorrow we discover that this paradigm is wrong, the
whole stability goes down the drain. The Codes do not rely on a
specific phylogenetic paradigm for labeling discrete units in nature
and that is their strength. This is not incompatible with molecular
surveys.

Kind regards,

Dan

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 7:49 AM, Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 6/8/2010 7:36 AM, Jason Mate wrote:
>> P.S. OK, I thought of one thing that could happen, Phylocode will take over!
>
> It will anyway, just by virtue of the orthodoxy that is build in to the
> code. This article, and the one on Zaprionus I mentioned are just a few
> articles representing a new era. The wealth of molecular data and the
> corresponding insights in the relationships between taxa/clades is going
> to result in more and more situations that are beyond the purview of the
> Code.
>
> Kim
> --
> http://www.kimvdlinde.com
>
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-- 
Daniel Lahr
-------------------------------------------------
PhD candidate
Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
U Massachusetts- Amherst
319 Morrill Science Center, Amherst
Amherst, MA 01003