Re: New name for Megalosaurus hesperis

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

On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 9:39 PM, Tim Williams <tijawi@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Rules is rules!  :-)  Yes, I want to end ranks.  But the ICZN keeps on 
> sticking its oar into coordinate family-level taxonomy, so it's best to frame 
> such taxa accordingly.  In an ideal world, the ICZN would only handle genera 
> and species, whereas everything above genera (families included) would no 
> longer be within the ICZN sphere.

Agreed, and let's be glad we're zoologists here....

(Actually, ideally there'd be no genera and a better way to handle
species, but I'm not going to hold my breath for that.)

> Yes, having explicitly unranked taxa is a good idea.  However, if somebody 
> sees a new name that ends in -oidea, there might be a tendency to treat is as 
> a superfamily (i.e., as a coordinate family level taxon), irrespective of the 
> original intent.

True.

>> Also at least one example among theropods: Microraptoria.
>
> Which was subsequently changed to Microraptorinae.  :-)

Arguably they are separate names that happen to have the same
(informal) phylogenetic definition. But Microraptoria is not under the
purview of any code (and so I'll continue to use it!).

> I've got nothing against clades ending in -oidea, -idae, -inae and -ini, per 
> se.  It's just that their definitions require extra care (or later 
> emendations) to conform to the Linnaean tenets enshrined in the ICZN code, to 
> ensure that the hierarchy is kept constant across changing topologies.  Aside 
> from being a no-no under ICZN rules, it would be 'odd', for example, if 
> Dromaeosaurinae ended up inside Microraptorinae - or vice versa.

Yes, this is one of the bigger (and sillier, IMHO) problems facing the
PhyloCode.

-- 
T. Michael Keesey
Technical Consultant and Developer, Internet Technologies
Glendale, California