Re: BRYONET: local endemics

BRYONET

Brent,

I am very well aware that these arguments have been thoroughly
DEBATED, actually since well before the 1980s. I first listened to
Dr. Lack, E.B. Ford, E.F. Warburg and others discuss them when I
was an undergraduate in the Botany Department at Oxford in the 1960s.

That does not mean they have been DEBUNKED. Please don't confuse
these two words. Actually, the correlation between breeding groups
and phylogeny is much better than you give it credit for. I agree
that phylogeny should be the basis of classification, as indeed it
is. Very often, the point on a clade that corresponds to an
inclusive group capable of interbreeding is where we place the rank
of species.

You yourself seem to be saying that genera should be nestable in
other genera. If that has been "debunked" how come you refer to the
current opposition to it as a "problem"?

Also, if you want to get rank-free classification taken seriously,
you need to come up with a system of clade-naming that is realistic
to use. The practical points raised by Paul Refearn and others here
are completely valid. I have yet to see any realistic naming system
to replace the binomials we use, but if I have missed it please let
me know where I can read about it. The binomial system works well in
the real world, and any new system would have to be at least
comparably practical to have any chance at all of being accepted.

Best wishes,

John.

Research Associate,
University and Jepson Herbaria,
University of California,
Berekeley, CA.
jcgame@stanford.edu
510 527 7855
--
jcgame@stanford.edu
510 527 7855

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