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

[Stephen Thorpe]

well, an extant *species*, Triops cancriformis, is perhaps 300 MY! 
http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/features/story.aspx?id=212

a genus is just a convenient monophyletic group, not a real entity, and 
"convenience" is very salient in the case of Drosophila

>and needs to have 100+ secondary homonyms resolved
yes, but they will all be obscure species. Whichever way you jump, there has to 
be some cost ...

Stephen


________________________________
From: Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com>
To: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Fri, 8 July, 2011 11:47:36 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Call for proxy votes for the forthcoming International 
Botanical Congress

That is an option. Drosophila currently would be 2250-2300 species, very 
heterogeneous, 60 million years old, and needs to have 100+ secondary 
homonyms resolved. How many 60 MY old genera are there?

Kim

On 7/7/2011 6:13 PM, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
> 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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