[Taxacom] resend Kingdom Protista (and Subkingdom Chromista)

[Richard Zander]

Angels dancing on pinheads in this thread.

I refer the discussion to the dissilient taxon concept. Any group that is clearly discernible as some central species/genus/family generating a cloud of radiative descendants is a non-arbitrary group deserving of a taxonomic name. Of course one must wrench one's mind away from the exact metaphysics of pure shared descent to the more down-to-earth and messy combination of shared and serial descent to identify such natural groups.

"Paraphyly" is just a shared descent code word for serial descent.


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Richard H. Zander
Missouri Botanical Garden – 4344 Shaw Blvd. – St. Louis – Missouri – 63110 – USA
richard.zander at mobot.org 
Web sites: http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/bfna/bfnamenu.htm and http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/ 

-----Original Message-----
From: Taxacom [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Dan Lahr
Sent: Friday, October 30, 2015 12:48 PM
To: JF Mate
Cc: Taxacom
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] resend Kingdom Protista (and Subkingdom Chromista)

Hi Jason,

"Dan, if we accept that "Classifications are arbitrary, and are thus used (cited) in ways to please one's own taste." then " accepting paraphyletic groups is simply absurd in my view." does not follow."

Really? It is my taste! Follows perfectly... I find it absurd and thus I don't cite it.

However, my taxonomic experience is not with hyper-diverse groups.  I can see how it may be sensible in some world that paraphyletic groupings are accepted for things such as insects - Ken does aptly name his proposition "eclectic".

cheers,

__________________________________
Daniel J. G. Lahr
PhD, Assist. Prof.
Dept of Zoology, Univ. of Sao Paulo, Brazil Office number: + 55 (11) 3091 0948 http://www.ib.usp.br/zoologia/lahr/


On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 3:33 PM, JF Mate <aphodiinaemate at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dan, if we accept that "Classifications are arbitrary, and are thus 
> used (cited) in ways to please one's own taste." then " accepting 
> paraphyletic groups is simply absurd in my view." does not follow.
>
> I find that stem/paraphyletic groups tend to be less agressively 
> dispised in taxa with either a good fossil record or insects. As long 
> as they are flagged as such they are more useful than 10 monotypic 
> genera created to keep a crown clade. Maybe when the pendulum swings 
> back from the current splitting spree we can have a sensible 
> classification that is cladistically congruent as well. IMO.
>
> Jason
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