DePhylocode: Light, not heat?

[Ken Kinman]

    This is my third (and thus last) post of the day, so I'd like to first
quickly comment on Benjamin Burger's post.  I just can't see giant
relational "Treezilla"s replacing Linnean classifications for many decades
(even among scientists).  There is more to classifications than just
branching (or at least there should be).  The nice thing about Kinman System
and databases is that the formal taxa remain relatively stable.
      For instance, our understanding of the relationships among mammal
Orders (especially eutherians) has recently altered our phylogenies greatly
(Ungulata has been shown to be polyphyletic, and everything else is getting
all "shook up" as well).  However, in my classification, all I have had to
do is rearrange the Orders and change the alphanumeric coding (which absorbs
most of the changes in cladogram topology).   This kind of "modular"
approach to classification is far more informative than traditional eclectic
classifications and obviously FAR far far more stable than strictly
cladistic "classifications" (which are indeed "exploding" and often
extremely unstable).

Now to answer Curtis:
     Mine *is* a formal classification.  Class Magnoliopsidea was divided
into 62 formal orders of dicots, plus the {{Class Liliopsidea}} marker for
the monocot exgroup (and in 1994, I coded monocots as sister group to Order
Aristolochiales).
     Anyway, the eudicots begin with Order Ranunculales at Node 4, so I can
refer to them informally in text as "eudicots", or more formally (in an
appendix/footnote) as Magnoliopsidea 4+.  You could even label this clade as
"eudicots" in the marginal space just to the left of the coding column.
      I just think coding intermediate clades is a lot better than giving
formal names to them.  The clade "eudicots" is pretty stable and appears to
be holophyletic, but most intermediate clades are not (Bullatosauria,
Arctometatarsalia, and dozens of others have been proposed just for the
theropod dinosaurs).  Many are found to polyphyletic in just a few years and
must be dropped or their contents greatly restricted.
     So we now have tyrannosaurs and several other groups that are
arctometatarsalian, but are not members of Arctometatarsalia.  And if that
isn't confusing enough, there are other groups that are
subarctometatarsalian and hyperarctometatarsalian.  You should read the
archives of the Dinosaur Mailing List sometime, where strict cladists are
continually arguing even amongst themselves over definitional trivialities
(and molehills become mountains).
     Even without PhyloCode, biological systematics is in for a very rough
ride.  Thirty-five years of cladists vs. eclecticists has created a huge
mess, and we're *still* fighting instead of cooperating.   What we really
need is a merger, not a hostile take-over.
             ------- Ken
****************************************
Curtis Clark wrote:
>
>At 02:01 PM 3/7/2002, Ken Kinman wrote:
>>     The clade "eudicots" is an excellent example of how most such clades
>>*should* be named--- informally.  This indeed does work very well.  I
>>recognized the "eudicot" clade in my 1994 classification.
>
>I'm puzzled; I thought yours was a formal classification?
>
>



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