[Taxacom] Reptilia (was: New lizard species)

[Stephen Thorpe]

Kim:

"new toy syndrome" = initially, when given a new piece of technology, people tend to get overenthusiastic about it instead of maintaining correct balance
In the present context it happened first with cladistics, now with molecular taxonomy, both of which are good and important, but in their place, and their place is not to trash Linnean taxonomy but to work with it ...

the Drosophila issue had little or nothing to do with any of this. Since D. melanogaster was never the type species of the genus, it was always on the cards that it might be put into another genus, whether by traditional taxonomic revision, or cladistics, or molecular ...

Stephen




________________________________
From: Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com>
To: Kenneth Kinman <kennethkinman at webtv.net>
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Wed, 9 June, 2010 12:47:00 PM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Reptilia (was: New lizard species)

Hi Ken,

On 6/8/2010 8:17 PM, Kenneth Kinman wrote:
>
> Hi Kim,
>        I'm not entirely sure if you were serious or joking
> about classifying mammals as reptiles.

Did you see my PS LOL at the end?

Anyway, I am becoming increasingly militant and more in favor of strict 
phylogenetic classification conform PhyloCode. Each time when I read 
about good work that is trashed because it was based on mainly molecular 
data, like the Zaprionus article I cited earlier, it makes less and less 
sense to me to keep going with an system that cannot handle the new ways.

Another aspect is my own really disappointed experience with the 
commission with regard to Sophophora melanogaster. We will have an 
increasingly number of cases in which the orthodoxy is hampering the 
stability of names for the biology community at large. But no, lets make 
a mess. Just look at Aedes aegyptii. How many of those cases do we need? 
No, in that context, phylocode seems to makes more sense and more sense.

Kim

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