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Date: Tue, 01 May 2001 21:21:03 -0500
From: "David M. Hillis" <dhillis@mail.utexas.edu>
To: phylocode@ouvaxa.cats.ohiou.edu
Subject: Re: subscribers
> I'm sorry if David (Hillis) felt insulted, but I certainly never said we >should be "unconcerned" about intermediate taxa (on the contrary, I spend much >of my time on them). What I am saying is that there no need to give them formal names. > I see no great need for formal taxa Theropoda, Coelurosauria, >Maniraptora, etc., when informal names (theropods, coelurosaurs, maniraptors, >etc.) suffice. Why then recognize any formal scientific names? Why not just use common English names for all taxa? Because, first of all, everyone doesn't speak English. Second of all, there are no rules for common names, and no two people will use the same names. Your argument doesn't apply to just a few taxa, it applies to all of them. There is no logical justification for preferring formal scientific names for just a few "special" taxa, especially when those decisions about what is "special" are completely arbitrary. This is not an argument against the PhyloCode, it is an argument against formal scientific names in general. If we are happy using the informal name lophotrochozoans rather than the scientific name Lophotrochozoa (at least in English), why not just say "mammals" rather than Mammalia and "tree frogs" rather than Hylidae? We could make everyone use English, even in Chinese publications! That would do away with the problem of naming species, too...we could just give all the species of the world common English names (after all, there are millions of them! Too many to learn!) and then make everyone use the English names. I don't see that this is any different than your argument...clades are no less a part of the Tree of Life than are species, and there is no reason to exclude some (but not all) of them from formal scientific nomenclature. If you don't want to use a given scientific name, fine...use the common name. No one makes birders use scientific names for species, either, but that doesn't mean that we should not give bird species formal scientific names. > > Why not just call them lophotrochozoans, and let them remain an informal >taxon, at the very least until we can demonstrate whether or not it is based >on symplesiomorphies rather than synapomorphies. There are hundreds of published synapomorphies for Lophotrochozoa, and the statistical support for the clade under any system of evidence (parsimony or not) is strong. The fact that they are mostly molecular characters is irrelevant to me; they are still evidence for the group. Certainly, the evidence for Lophotrochozoa is stronger than many of the formal taxa that you recognize...so who is to decide which taxa are important enough to recognize with formal names? This just leaves it up to authorities to argue, and systematics takes a giant step back into the dark ages. David Hillis David M. Hillis Director, School of Biological Sciences Director's office: 512-232-3690 (FAX: 512-232-3699) Alfred W. Roark Centennial Professor Section of Integrative Biology University of Texas Austin, TX 78712 Research Office: 512-471-5792 Lab: 512-471-5661 FAX: 512-471-3878 E-mail: dhillis@mail.utexas.edu