[Taxacom] What is Homo sapiens

Thu May 31 16:36:42 CDT 2018

Yes, it was a bit of a rhetorical question to make a point about lumping vs. splitting of taxa above the species level. Misunderstanding and/or misuse of this issue can cause problems (and may be doing so in the Homo sapiens example). My pet hate example is Nothofagus, where two botanists from N.Z. have cause major disruption to centuries of usage by elevating the subgenera to full genera, just to make them fit slightly better with the divergence ages for other related taxa already recognised as genera (and in doing so conveniently for them got to formally rename everything with new combinations attibuted to themselves!)

Stephen

--------------------------------------------
On Fri, 1/6/18, James K Adams <jadams at daltonstate.edu> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [Taxacom] What is Homo sapiens
 To: "taxacom" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>, "Tony Rees" <tonyrees49 at gmail.com>, "Richard Zander" <Richard.Zander at mobot.org>, "Stephen Thorpe" <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
 Received: Friday, 1 June, 2018, 9:02 AM

 Stephen,

          The
 answer to your question is, of course, yes.  Any higher
 level taxon could be "defined" this way.  

 James

 James K. Adams

 Professor of Biology, Dalton State College

 706-272-4427; 678-767-5938

 visit the Georgia Lepidoptera website at

 http://dscweb.daltonstate.edu/galeps

 From: Taxacom
 <taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> on behalf of
 Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>

 Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2018 4:55:23 PM

 To: taxacom; Tony Rees; Stephen Thorpe; Richard
 Zander

 Subject: Re: [Taxacom] What is Homo sapiens

 "A
 genus is a nexus of radiation from one ancestral species,
 adaptive or otherwise"

 Wouldn't this apply equally to any taxon above species?
 Isn't the entire kingdom Animalia "a nexus of
 radiation from one ancestral species"?

 Stephen

 --------------------------------------------

 On Fri, 1/6/18, Richard Zander
 <Richard.Zander at mobot.org> wrote:

  Subject: Re: [Taxacom] What is Homo sapiens

  To: "taxacom"
 <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>, "Tony Rees"
 <tonyrees49 at gmail.com>, "Stephen Thorpe"
 <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>

  Received: Friday, 1 June, 2018, 8:31 AM

  Sure, Stephen,

  there is a "universal criterion for what constitutes
 a

  genus". A genus is a nexus of radiation from one

  ancestral species, adaptive or otherwise. Since
 cladistics

  does not focus on multifurcations but seeks

   to eliminate them, there is no cladistic definition of
 a

  genus. Anyone whose ideational straightjacket is
 cladistics

  cannot even conceptualize a natural, empirically
 defined

  genus concept.

  Richard

  From: Taxacom

  <taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> on behalf of

  Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>

  Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2018 6:13 PM

  To: taxacom; Tony Rees

  Subject: Re: [Taxacom] What is Homo sapiens

  "By

  logical extension, hypothetical neanderthalensis and

  heidelbergensis clades, regardless of their relationship
 to

  a sapiens clade, should be regarded as separate

  genera"

  By logical extension, I would infer that the author is
 a

  cladist with little or no understanding of taxonomy!
 The

  quoted statement is nonsense at every level! It just
 makes

  no sense at all! There are no universal taxonomic
 criteria

  for what constitutes a genus

   (other than monophyly). Therefore you just make the
 genus

  Homo inclusive enough to include all 3 clades - easy
 peasy,

  problem solvedy!

  Stephen

  --------------------------------------------

  On Thu, 31/5/18, Tony Rees <tonyrees49 at gmail.com>

  wrote:

   Subject: Re: [Taxacom] What is Homo sapiens

   To: "taxacom"

  <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>

   Received: Thursday, 31 May, 2018, 11:00 AM

   From the cited paper:

   "...For, if the suggestion of a clade that

  includes

   H. sapiens is correct, it follows that Homo

   should be restricted to members

   of this

   clade. By logical extension, hypothetical

  neanderthalensis

   and

   heidelbergensis clades, regardless of

   their relationship to a sapiens

   clade,

   should be regarded as separate genera." This

  sounds

   like devil's

   advocacy to me (or

   reduction to the absurd) - if workers cannot even
 agree

   on whether of not neanderthalensis is a

   subspecies of sapiens, putting it

   into a

   separate genus makes no sense to this observer - or

  perhaps

   I am

   missing something.

   Also I noticed an odd statement at the

   beginning - "Thus it fell upon

   Blumenbach (1969) to provide the first

   morphological diagnosis of Homo

   sapiens." - especially considering that

   the Blumenbach in question died

   some 129

   years earlier (I remembered from the recent thread in

  which

   we

   discussed the earliest scientific name

   for the dingo). I checked the cited

   reference and it is a 1969 reprint of an 1865

   work published under the

   title "The

   anthropological treatises of Johann Friedrich

   Blumenbach", in

   which is reprinted 

   Blumenbach's "On the natural variety of

   mankind",

   first(?) published in 1775.

   So if "Blumenbach (1969)" were replaced by

   "Blumenbach

   (1775)"

   it would make rather more sense. Hopefully the
 remainder

  of

   the

   paper is a bit more factually correct

   :)

   Regards - Tony

   Tony Rees, New South Wales,

   Australia

   https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fabout.me%2FTonyRees&data=02%7C01%7Cjadams%40daltonstate.edu%7C62e97b0de3d14b5c649208d5c738d6bd%7Cb7e81e5d72424dff8f1e47d691148e41%7C0%7C1%7C636633969318176780&sdata=HxNK1JbbX3ToMKFAfLD542gzv%2FitarAoPRinDr5GR%2F0%3D&reserved=0

  Tony Rees - New South Wales,

  Australia | about.me

  about.me

  I am a software engineer in New South Wales, Australia.

  Visit my website.

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