[Taxacom] Call for proxy votes for the forthcoming International Botanical Congress

[Stephen Thorpe]

correction: apparently the buprestid genus Agrilus has 2879 valid species




________________________________
From: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
To: Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com>; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Fri, 8 July, 2011 10:13:06 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Call for proxy votes for the forthcoming International 
Botanical Congress


it seems to me that the most sensible solution to the Drosophila problem would 
be to lump the minimum number of taxa together to preserve Drosophila 
melanogaster within a monophyletic Drosophila, and use subgenera to split the 
genus up into major clades. The only potential problem is that there could me 
more species of Drosophila than there are specific epithets, but I doubt it. The 
genus Onthophagus currently has 2307 species 
(http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Onthophagus), and is the largest genus of 
anything. So, why not beat it?

Stephen




________________________________
From: Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com>
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Fri, 8 July, 2011 10:01:05 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Call for proxy votes for the forthcoming International 
Botanical Congress

Karl,

On 7/7/2011 2:02 PM, Karl Magnacca wrote:
> In Drosophila, it's purely an
> emotional/usage argument for changing the type, and would in fact
> lead to *more* species changing names.  If you wanted to preserve
> the greatest number of species, the type of Drosophila should
> actually be moved into the Hawaiian Drosophila, which have at least
> 600 species, compared to ~350 in Sophophora.

No, I never wanted to preserve the largest number of species, just the 
name of the species used most often. Most Drosophila species will change 
their name regardless, and now the smaller of the two, with the least 
number of publications is retaining the name.

Kim


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