Bird names
Michael Gochfeld
gochfeld at eohsi.rutgers.edu
Tue Jun 8 18:45:57 EDT 1999
I'll respectfully disagree with Doug. I having struggled with the
generic concept longer ago than I care to remember, I think that
defining generic relationships is part art, part illusion and part
science---and how much of each varies with the particular taxon.
Moreover, the strict cladists arguing for dichotomous branching at every
level, would leave us with numerous levels of branching such that the
similarity between two "species" within Genus A may be much greater than
that between two "species" in genus B. Moreover, the people who have to
remember the names are not necessarily those who have to know or care
about the relationships. It is indeed nice to know the relationships
and often they have some importance outside of the strict discipline of
systematics----for example, it's nice to know which primates are more
closely related to humans if you want to study them as models for
humans.
For the most part, however, we have been talking about communicating
among people with like interests----which are outside of strict
systematics.
I don't personally like the numbers, but I certainly don't expect to
keep on top of the name changes----many of which swing back
inexorably---to a prior name. Yet journal editors have policies
regarding nomenclature to which authors are expected to adhere,
uncritically.
So, I suppose if we really knew once and for all which two species of
anything were most closely related, then I wouldn't mind reflecting that
in the generic name.
Having been involved in a split at the family level (birds), I can only
say that whatever problems exist at the generic level may be worse when
it comes to deciding whether a group is a subfamily or a family.
Mike Gochfeld
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