[Taxacom] Arthropods and idiots!

[John Grehan]

Have to note that Ken is off base when confusing nomenclatural terms with
the construction of systematic relationships once again. Making new names
or changing old ones is something anyone with any phylogenetic approach can
do. If Stephen is correct that  Arthropoda has simply been swapped for
Euarthropoda it would certainly seem pointless, so it would have been a
little more helpful to those not directly engaged in such issues if Stephen
had referred to the rationale presented by the authors.

When Ken states that he suspects that cladistic analyses are very badly
misrooted I would agree with him that is of concern if correct (and by
rooting I presume this means having the correct sister group as the
outgroup?). So I would look forward in the future to any informative
postings about that.

John Grehan

On Wed, Dec 12, 2018 at 10:20 AM Kenneth Kinman <kinman at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Stephen,
>        Just as strict cladists of vertebrate paleontology have
> destabilized vertebrate classification, strict cladists of arthropod
> paleontology seem to be doing the same to arthropod classification.
>        HOWEVER, with arthropods it will likely be much worse if (as I have
> long believed) their cladistic analyses are very badly misrooted.  At least
> vertebrate trees are generally well rooted with appropriate outgroups.  If
> onychophorans, tardigrades, and other ecydysozoans are actually ingroups
> (and are merely dearthropodized), using them as outgroups has been
> misleading researchers for many decades.   You can read my postings on that
> subject (here on Taxacom) back in 2010:
>
> http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom/2010-February/068191.html
>
>                  ------------------Ken
>
> ________________________________
> From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> on behalf of Stephen
> Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
> Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2018 9:39 PM
> To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: [Taxacom] Arthropods and idiots!
>
> Firmly in the category of pointless name changes, must be Euarthropoda for
> Arthropoda, which seems to be catching on, and has been recently adopted by
> Wikipedia! It all seems to be the result of one paper:
>
> Ortega‐Hernández, J. 2014 (online) 2016 (print): Making sense of ‘lower’
> and ‘upper’ stem‐group Euarthropoda, with comments on the strict use of the
> name Arthropoda von Siebold, 1848. Biological reviews, 91(1): 255-273.
> https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12168
>
> Needless to say that there are no formal rules which govern the
> appropriateness or otherwise of names at this level, and, in the case of
> Arthropoda, universal usage for hundreds of years should be the main
> consideration!
>
> Big sigh!
>
> Stephen
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