[CPN] additions to proposed modifications

[David Marjanovic]

I agree with everything I don't address here or in my previous post.

Note 6.1A.1, Ex. 1 to Note 9.14A.2, Rec. 11C, and App. C: There is no 2012 edition of the ICZN. http://www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted-sites/iczn/code/ There's only the 1999 edition, with one amendment that's valid from 2012.

Art. 6.2: Technically it's not above the rank of superfamily where most ICZN rules stop applying, but above the family group of ranks; the only rank in that group that's widely used and higher than family happens to be the superfamily, but various giga- and grandfamilies were proposed in the late 80s and early 90s and are governed by the ICZN.

Ex. 1 to Art. 9.10: Why not shorten "a name that is defined as applying to a crown clade" to "a name for a crown clade"? And why the capital letter in "19th Century"?

Art. 9.15: Not every author has a surname. I recommend the dizzying Wikipedia article "Indian name" -- in much of India, people use their own name, their father's, and/or their ancestral village's in various orders, often abbreviating some of these to initials in English-language publications. Surnames were only reintroduced in Mongolia in 2004, and a few Mongolians have been very active in paleontology, publishing under their fathers' names followed by their own, a practice many continue to this day. Closer to home, Icelanders are overrepresented in science, and most of them don't have surnames either. I do not, however, have any idea how to come up with a wording that would accommodate such complications.

I cannot see the comment on the deletion of Rec. 9.15A.

Note 19.1.2: The ICNAFP had a curious exemption for the names of fossils: they didn't need a Latin description/diagnosis.

Ex. 3 to Rec. 21.3B, and Rec. 21.4A (third occurrence): missing italics for ICNAFP.

Glossary entry for "branch": Replace "speciation" by "cladogenesis", "split" or "divergence" throughout. "Speciation" is only a synonym of those under very few species concepts! The entry for "node" uses "split".

Glossary entry for "infraspecific name": The ICZN does not recognize any ranks below subspecies! From the genus downwards, the acknowledged ranks are specified in the ICZN: genus, subgenus, "group of species" (actually, I'm not sure about that one), species, subspecies. The names of varieties, forms and whatever are explicitly not governed by the ICZN at all. Start at articles 42 http://www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted-sites/iczn/code/includes/page.jsp?article=42&nfv= and 45.

More below:

Gesendet: Dienstag, 12. November 2013 um 17:25 Uhr
Von: "Graham, Sean" <swgraham at mail.ubc.ca>
An: "James Doyle" <jadoyle at ucdavis.edu>, "Committee on Phylogenetic Nomenclature" <cpn at listserv.ohio.edu>
Betreff: Re: [CPN] additions to proposed modifications

> [...]
>
> Changes to 9.16 (p. 20). What if some parts of these multiple, complex set of synapomorphies are subsequently shown to be homoplasies (and so not actually useful for defining a clade). Should we discourage too-complex definitions; aren’t simple, unambiguous ones be generally preferable? Or is this too prescriptive?

Such definitions are potentially self-destructive; sometimes, that's exactly what's intended.

> Does one have to be a cladist to use the phylocode for apomorphy-based definitions?

No. One has to have a phylogenetic hypothesis, but one doesn't have to test it.
 
From: cpn-bounces at listserv.ohio.edu [cpn-bounces at listserv.ohio.edu] on behalf of James Doyle [jadoyle at ucdavis.edu]
Sent: November-11-13 10:00 PM
To: Committee on Phylogenetic Nomenclature
Subject: Re: [CPN] additions to proposed modifications

> I've read over and approve of all these changes.  I think it is more prudent to remove plant fossil morphotaxa (called various things in earlier versions of the IBC, such as form and organ genera) from the discussion that now covers just ichnotaxa and ootaxa.  Morphotaxa seem to me several steps above ichnotaxa in being real parts of organisms.  Some morphotaxa (like pollen genera) may be analogous to ootaxa (I didn't know these existed), but a lot of others have been variously considered "form genera" and "natural" or "whole plant genera" by different authors, for instance starting out as form genera but later being used as names for whole plants.  I'm not an expert on the arcane history of these concepts, but it would indeed raise havoc to exclude all names of taxa that have been called morphotaxa from use as specifiers.
>
> Jim

As the comment to Rec. 11C mentions, the ICNAFP has recently stopped allowing morphotaxa; names created for such are now in full competition for synonymy with all others. That should take care of this question.