[CPN] additions to proposed modifications

[Graham, Sean]

Thanks David, further thoughts below (**) --

> [...]
>
> 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.

** Can we hope everyone will use the tools wisely, and should we be responsible for worrying about that?


> 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.

** Yes, but hypotheses of character change are distinct from tree hypotheses. What I was getting at is that the former are often 'clearcut' in a parsimony framework, but are much more 'smudged', and often ambiguous, in a probabilitistic framework, e.g. ML character reconstructions (and some would argue, that's a more realistic view of what we know about character change). 

So if a name is tied to an assumption of character change that only holds with one 'world-view' of systematics, I thought that that could be a problem, or was at least worth pointing out. In the same way the inclusion of synapomorphies as extra information in name definitions has always bothered me a bit -- it all sounds very 'certain' when it's often anything but!