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Date: Sat, 12 May 2001 12:29:33 +0200
From: David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>
To: PhyloCode mailing list <phylocode@ouvaxa.cats.ohiou.edu>
Subject: Re: [Making Up Names _versus_ Emending Names
> There were already emended alternate spellings in the literature for the > groups you mention, Echiura, Sipuncula, Annelidia, Gnathostomula. As I tried to write, I've seen Echiura, Sipuncula and Gnathostomula (though more rarely than -ida), but Annelidia is totally news to me... > It and Pogonophora are probably just subclades of Phylum Annelidia > anyway. Probably. A Nature paper from 3 May puts *Riftia pachyptila* into Vestimentifera, and this into Polychaeta. > And Gnathostomula is not a separate phylum either This is obviously subjective. > ----it's related to > Gastrotrichea, Rotiferea, and Acanthocephalea (which are also often > erroneously regarded as separate phyla). Yesterday I've found a paper (hardly read it and didn't copy it :.-( ) in Zoologischer Anzeiger. It contains a morphological tree of Metazoa and finds Protostomia to consist of (Cycloneuralia + (Gnathifera + Spiralia)), Cycloneuralia containing Gastrotricha, Kinorhyncha, Loricifera, Priapulida, Nematoda and Nematomorpha, Gnathifera (new) of, IIRC, (Gnathostomulida + (Micrognathozoa + (Sessionida [or however this is spelled... :-] ] + (Acanthocephala + Eurotifera)))). There is an 18S rDNA tree in the paper on acoel relationships I mentioned some days ago that finds Gastrotricha outside of Ecdysozoa, as the basalmost Lophotrochozoa. > There are far too many phyla > floating around, and it just obscures their relationships. Only if we stick to ranks! > Catenulida is an Order, within Class Turbellarea (Phylum Platyhelmintha). Catenulida _was_ an order. In the lecture "General Biology IV: Comparative Anatomy, Morphology and Biology of the Animals", which is rather traditional (no cladistics, no Ecdyso- & Lophotrochozoa, Articulata), I was taught that the partition of Plat(y)helminthes (I don't know Greek, but probably linguists will do scary things with you when they see -helmintha, standardization or not) into the classes Turbellaria, Trematoda and Cestoda was old and outdated (AFAIK not even the word "paraphyletic" was mentioned), and that nowadays the classes were Catenulida, Rhabditophora (which includes Neodermata which includes Trematoda & Cestoda) and Acoelomorpha. The 18S rDNA tree I just mentioned finds Catenulida as basalmost flatworms, but the two orders of Acoelomorpha (Acoela + Nemertodermatida) far apart, the former as basalmost Bilateria, the latter high up in Rhabditophora. > Halkieriida is an Order in Class Machaeridea. Ah! What is Machaerida? > Order Tullimonstrida is the > sole member of Class Tullimonstrea (Phylum Promollusca, which also includes 2 > Classes of hyoliths, other fossil classes, and sipunculans might belong here > as well). Promollusca is news to me... is it paraphyletic? > Class Phoronidea contains Order Phoronida and probably the fossil > Order Helicosyringida. I see. > And since you forgot to mention it, I didn't know it... > there is also Pycnogonida [...]. What I have done is > just an extension of what others have started, and I finished the job since I > was classifying all organisms anyway (fossil and living). Sure. > Luckily the ones you cited are all -sauriformes, so you know they are reptile > taxa at the subclass or supraordinal level. Aaaah! Sorry!!! Mammaliaformes? (OK, only of interest with the crown group concept of Mammalia.) Amniotiformes? > Such -formes names also crop up > in a few other groups where the cladists started splitting taxa into superfine > pectinate series that are often found to have little hierarchical stability > and many of the names have been (or will be) thrown on the garbage heap. It seems to me that the ones I mentioned are very stable. > There are too many formal taxa as it is, Others say there are still too few... Life is diverse... > and I think phylocode is going > to open the floodgates of cladistic excess. I don't think so -- all those "excesses" have already happened. > You don't have to formally name > clades to discuss them, Sure. For example, (*Pseudolagosuchus* + Dinosauria) has not been named and is discussed from time to time. If it will be discussed much more often, however, it will surely be named, because "the unnamed node containing *Pseudolagosuchus* and Dinosauria" is a bit cumbersome. Even the most ardent cladists have realized in the meantime that the old premise "every node must be named" is nonsense, because there are potentially as many nodes as species minus one, and additionally there are stems. > and I think I have found a way to cladistically nest > taxa without all the side-effects of pure cladism. I must admit that. However, you also omit the IMHO beneficial side-effects of pure cladism, such as the lack of ranks that permits to have more than 5 levels of hierarchy. > Finishing the job of > standardization is just icing on the cake (but it's controversial, as it has > been for a very long time--- many ornithologists fought standardized endings > like the world was coming to an end). I'm uninformed -- When? Why? > Well the world kept on spinning, and > they are now the universally accepted ordinal names. As I've said before, standardization of endings is certainly a good -- the only logical -- idea if we keep ranks. Someone should have done this 50 or 100 ore more years ago. Just IMHO we shouldn't keep ranks, and the number of cladists grows steadily, so hardly anybody will ever use your system -- it comes too late.