Name Stability

[Niklas Wahlberg]

"Kondla, Norbert FOR:EX" wrote:
> 
> As much as I enjoy the intellectual and technical debates about the
> evolutionary relationships between organisms and the conventions that we
> chose to use for applying names; there is an irreverent but perhaps
> realistic perspective to share on this topic:
> - names of organisms will become stable when pigs fly -- but I hasten to add
> that with the advent of genetic engineering this could happen sooner rather
> than later and besides, who is to say that such an event could not
> eventually evolve without human design
> - names of organisms will become stable when a supreme being/omnipotent
> deity forces us to accept her/his/its view of the right name and right
> phylogeny

Well, I wouldn't be so pessimistic. In my view names should represent
monophyletic entities (i.e. all taxons within a given group should have
a common ancestor). There is no need for a somebody to force us to
accept one phylogeny. The plant people are way ahead of the rest of us
in this respect, there are lots of people looking at the same problem.
If they all come up with the same answer independently, then we have
something stable. Once we have a stable phylogeny, it is "easy" to agree
on how to place names on the different monophyletic groups apparent on
that phylogeny. 
    Some people do not want the names we give to the different groups to
convey any information, but for me the ranks class, order, family,
genus, and everything in between certainly do convey information about
the relationships of species I know nothing about. I don't want a "clade
address", which would mean I would have to dig up the article originally
describing that clade to understand what it means. I prefer to talk
about Papilionidae, Elachistidae or Asteraceae and Proteaceae for that
matter.
    My main point is that at the moment we are going through a taxonomic
revolution, in the sense that we are discovering the relationships of
different species (groups). Once this is done (it won't happen
overnight), we will (I believe) reach a stable taxonomy. 10 million
species? It's possible, though it'll take a hell of a lot of work. I'm
happy to be doing it in my own small way (and certainly not making money
out of it)! And having a stable taxonomy wouldn't stop the curious. Just
think of all the possibilities if we knew the relationships of all
species.

Cheers,
Niklas
-- 
________________________________________________________________________

   Niklas Wahlberg                          
   Metapopulation Research Group
   Department of Ecology and Systematics    
   Division of Population Biology           
   PO Box 17 (Arkadiankatu 7)               
   00014 University of Helsinki
   Finland                                                         
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