[Taxacom] Hijacking paraphyletic taxon names (but thankfully not Crustacea)
Stephen Thorpe
stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz
Sat Feb 10 15:17:03 CST 2018
In the case of "great apes", the best solution, I suggest, is to consider Hominidae (=Pongidae) to be the family of "great apes and humans", rather than to consider humans to be "great apes" (or "great apes" to be humans!) There is something about this example, I'm not sure what, which makes it hard for even the most traditional taxonomist to justify retaining a paraphyletic Pongidae. Compare with retaining a paraphyletic Pisces or Reptilia.
Stephen
--------------------------------------------
On Sun, 11/2/18, John Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com> wrote:
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Hijacking paraphyletic taxon names (but thankfully not Crustacea)
To: "Kenneth Kinman" <kinman at hotmail.com>
Cc: "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>, "Stephen Thorpe" <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
Received: Sunday, 11 February, 2018, 10:09 AM
Thanks
Ken,
As with 'great
apes' some paraphyletic names are useful, but just not a
formal taxa.
Which crustacea
were grouped closer to insects?Curious as I haven't kept
up with that.
Names
are a matter of personal choice. There's no
authoritative body so no doubt there will always be
disagreement over such matters and some choices will be
popular than others for whatever reason. There is no
absolute right or wrong about that.
John
On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at
4:05 PM, Kenneth Kinman <kinman at hotmail.com>
wrote:
Hi John,
That's
right. I actually find a lot of cladistic analyses very
useful. But I don't like throwing the baby out with
the bathwater (some of those paraphyletic taxa are quite
useful). And I certainly don't like
strict cladists hijacking the names of those paraphyletic
taxa (I call that a mis-application of names).
----------Ken Kinman, a cladist (but not a strict
cladist)
From: John Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2018 2:43 PM
To: Kenneth Kinman
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu;
Stephen Thorpe
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Hijacking paraphyletic taxon
names (but thankfully not Crustacea)
So cladistics is not the problem after all.
Just an objection for the application of names.
Am I correct to understand that some crustaceans that
were previously grouped under 'Crustacea' have
turned out to be more closely related to insects than other
crustacea?
On
Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 3:34 PM, Kenneth Kinman
<kinman at hotmail.com>
wrote:
Hi all,
We probably wouldn't be having a debate about
paraphyletic taxa if the strict cladists hadn't hijacked
the names of major paraphyletic taxa, especially those with
large exgroups. Instead of creating a new clade name,
Sarcopterygii was hijacked and a
huge exgroup (all the tetrapods) shoved into it. It
completely changed the meaning of Sarcopterygii. Same with
Reptilia and Dinosauria (shoving all the birds into them).
If they wanted a clade uniting dinosaurs and birds, they
should have come up with a
new name instead of greatly changing the meaning of taxon
Dinosauria.
Luckily this was done in one major case. The
clade name Pancrustacea was created for crustaceans and
their hexapod descendants. The name Crustacea wasn't
hijacked. Thank goodness.
---------------Ken
______________________________ __
From: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
Sent: Friday, February 9, 2018 10:53 PM
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu;
Kenneth Kinman
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Insects are crustacean descendants
vs. "insects ARE crustaceans"
Ken,
I think the cladist mind thinks that a taxon includes all
its decendants, so whatever name applies to the taxon also
applies to all its decendants. So, tetrapods are
Sarcopterygia/sarcopterygians. Sort of makes sense.
Tetrapods are also animals, eukaryotes,
etc.
Stephen
------------------------------ --------------
On Sat, 10/2/18, Kenneth Kinman <kinman at hotmail.com>
wrote:
Subject: [Taxacom] Insects are crustacean descendants vs.
"insects ARE crustaceans"
To: "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu"
<taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Received: Saturday, 10 February, 2018, 4:10 PM
Hi all,
The present discussion about paraphyly reminds me of
strict
cladists insisting that "birds ARE
dinosaurs",
rather than "birds are dinosaur descendants".
I
suppose they might think that they are preparing the
next
generation of young dinosaur lovers to support strict
cladists and perhaps even become future strict
cladists.
But not all dinosaur
researchers think that this is a good idea. In his
paper
Origin of Birds: The Final Solution? (American
Zoologist:
Vol. 40, No. 4, pp. 504-512), Peter Dodson says:
"For
example, the word dinosaur was not previously problematic
-
it was universally understood. Within cladistics it has
now
been redefined to include birds ... and then a new and
cumbersome phrase, non-avian dinosaur, has been
substituted.
This is not progress; this is semantic obfuscation not
enlightened communication."
I agree that it is semantic
obfuscation. Saying "Birds are dinosaurs"
(instead of birds are dinosaur descendants) is like
saying
"Tetrapods are sarcopterygian fish" (instead
of
Tetrapods are descendants of sarcopterygian fish). Or
how
about "Insects are crustaceans", rather than
"Insects are crustacean descendants."
In all these cases,
you would be trying to force a well-known exgroup taxon
back
into its mother taxon. In other words, it is a war
against
paraphyletic taxa which would become glaringly absurd
if
applied across the board. How about "Vertebrates
are
invertebrates" instead of "Vertebrates are
invertebrate descendants"?
-----------------Ken Kinman
-----------------------------
------------------------------ ----------------
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