Re: Classification: A Definition

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

On 5/24/07, gerarus@westnet.com.au <gerarus@westnet.com.au> wrote:
> You're quite right, and even workers who are used to the idea of
> rank-free taxa still tend to cringe when seeing one '-idae' within
> another. I had to stop myself a couple of years ago on the cusp of
> sending off a toxic message to the DML about the PhyloCode Testudines
> classification paper in _Journal of Paleontology_ (I can't recall the
> reference, unfortunately),

Joyce, W.J., J.F. Parham, and J.A. Gauthier. 2004. Developing a
protocol for the conversion of rank-based taxon names to
phylogenetically defined clade names, as exemplified by turtles.
Journal of Paleontology 78:989â1013.

> because they had given clades containing
> multiple "genera" but only one surviving "genus" names like
> Pancarettochelys - I was about to moan about clade names formed like
> such, until I realised I didn't have any actual _arguments_ to
> support myself, and my only real argument was "the names just look
> icky" ;-).

There is a more serious problem with this type of prefix (namely that
"Pan" is already in use: e.g., Panarthropoda is not the total group of
Arthropoda), but the latest draft of the PhyloCode solves it by making
the prefix hyphenated. Thus, the total group would be
_Pan-Carettochelys_ now (and might even change again to something like
pan-Carettochelys in a future draft--we'll see). (For the arthropods,
we would have pan-Arthropoda and pan-Panarthropoda, which is still a
bit cringe-inducing, but is at least distinguishable.)

I have a greater problem with the portmanteau names in that
paper--taking the first part of one genus name and appending it to the
second part of another genus name to form the name of the node-based
clade specified by them.
--
Mike Keesey