Re: The Papers That Ate Cincinnati

["T. Michael Keesey" <keesey@gmail.com>]

On 5/4/07, John Conway <john.a.conway@gmail.com> wrote:
> Seems to me that the best solution would to not use Aves at all. It's a
> common name in some languages,

Which ones? I welcome correction from a native speaker, but I think
none of the common words for "bird" in the extant Romance languages
are cognate with Latin "avis". Examples:
- French: oiseau
- Italian: uccello
- Portuguese: pÃssaro
- Romanian: pasÄre
- Spanish: pÃjaro

The Latin cognate does exist in these languages (and in English as
"avian"), but I don't think it's the more common form (much as, in
English, "avian" and "fowl" are not nearly as common as "bird").

> and the rather narrow constraints of
> phylogenetic nomenclature aren't suited to capturing what is meant by
> "bird". Even if we could find a precise definition of bird such as "the
> first feathered animal leading to modern birds that achieved powered
> flight, and all it's descendents"; what would that be under the
> phylocode? An _event_ based clade?

No, that's an apomorphy-based clade. It's equivalent to _Avialae_
sensu Gauthier and de Queiroz, 2001. And even if the exact content is
difficult to determine, it's still potentially useful, being a real
entity relevant to discussions of the origin of flight.

The idea of not defining the name "Aves" at all was discussed here:
http://www.phylonames.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19&start=59

--
Mike Keesey