Caleb's question (ranks)

["Ken Kinman" <kinman@hotmail.com>]

Caleb,
    The easiest taxonomic rank to recognize is the Family, because all 
zoological family names end with the suffix -idae.  Family Spinosauridae is 
an example.  Subfamilies end with -inae.   In botany and bacteriology the 
family names end with the suffix -aceae, such as Family Rosaceae (rose 
family).
    Unfortunately there is no formally recognized standard suffix for the 
Orders and Classes of animals.  Since bird and fish Orders already had the 
standardized suffix -iformes, I extended such standardization to all 
chordate Orders, but without mandating typification (examples: 
Pterosauriformes, Ichthyosauriformes, Primatiformes, Rodentiformes, 
Carnivoriformes).  For most invertebrate Orders, the suffix -ida is widely 
used.  Botanists do standardize ordinal names with the -ales suffix.
    When you get to Class rank, there are no rules, for either zoology or 
botany.  Because of that, I decided to take the bull by the horns (so to 
speak) in my 1994 classification of organisms.  All 269 Classes which I 
recognized were emended (when necessary) to a standardized -ea suffix, 
whether botanical or zoological, and in a majority of cases it only required 
the change of a single letter.  Whether this eventually catches on or not is 
anybody's guess.  There has been a reluctance to standardize endings in the 
past, although my decision not to mandate typification should remove a major 
cause of such reluctance.  And phylogenetic taxonomists don't like ranks at 
all, so no point in trying to convince them.
    Anyway, Caleb, I have tried to move toward names that are clearly 
designated as to rank.  Oh, and you asked about genera too---they are 
generally italicized or underlined, but if phylogenetic taxonomy adopts 
certain proposals, italics may be used for non-genus taxa (that remains to 
be seen).
                       -----Ken Kinman
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