Message 2001-06-0041: Re: current usage (blunt talk)

Tue, 01 May 2001 16:41:30 -0700

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Date: Tue, 01 May 2001 16:41:30 -0700
From: chris brochu <cbrochu@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu>
To: PhyloCode@ouvaxa.cats.ohiou.edu
Subject: Re: current usage (blunt talk)

>Michel Laurin wrote:
>
>......I have not seen a backlash against cladistics because of
>the new
>meanings that we give to many names, although I admit that a few people
>don't
>like this.  But these are mostly people who don't like cladistics anyway
>(and
>they are systematists), so I don't expect them to like the Phylocode...
>
>
>I am a (eukaryotic) microbiologist, and inhabit a world where
>"cladist" is generally used as an insult.  As I read the phylocode, it
>should be acceptable to people who think parsimony analyses of anything
>are a waste of time, but who nonetheless want an efficient code for
>classification.  I wouldn't give up on converting 'cladistics-haters' to
>Phylocode.
>


There  are different meanings of the word "cladist" afoot.  It can mean  an
advocate of phylogenetic taxonomy (restricting taxon  names to clades, at
least above the species  level), an  advocate of parsimony analysis, or
some  combination of the two.  I see the two approaches confused in the
literature, especially among invertebrate paleontologists.



chris

------------------------
Christopher A. Brochu
Assistant Professor
Department of Geoscience
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA 52242

christopher-brochu@uiowa.edu
319-353-1808 phone
319-335-1821 fax



  

Feedback to <mike@indexdata.com> is welcome!