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Bird Families of the World, 12th edition (1 Viewer)

I can only echo Andrew147: Mysticete, you are misrepresenting my point.

Families, species etc. used now are not divorced from phylogeny. They all have common ancestor and all include this last common ancestor but not all its descendants.

This is the only option which saves the taxonomy from being slowly abandoned from practical use in biology and delegated to the small group of taxonomists.

Otherwise many taxonomic monstrosities will put anybody off taxonomy. Examples are modern birds as a family of dinosaurs, polar bear as a subspecies of brown bear, inculding dolphins and whales into pair-hoofed ungulates, Drosophila melanogaster being renamed etc.
 
The taxonomy divorced from phylogeny statement was not directed at you, but rather the idea we should employ a paraphyletic taxonomy (which yes is garbage)

The Drosophila example I give above though is right on target. Ranks do not have any useful distinction and how they are employed vary by the group of organism. In this case, Songbird researchers prefer more narrowly defined families than workers on other bird groups, probably because taxonomy amongst songbirds has been less well understood and more chaotic, and most songbird workers prefer not to lump families, as it usually causes greater instability than erecting new ones. This has been the argument given to me by other workers...perhaps this should have been the first thing I said.

If my reply came back as a bit terse, it might simply be my frustration in getting my view across, and the feeling we are going in circles here
Again, Mysticete, you miss my point - wilfully or otherwise. I am not proposing taxonomy divorced from phylogeny.

I was simply seeking a reason why 'family' is so inconsistently applied WITHIN Aves, WITHIN single works. Drosophila is not my present concern.

As soon as someone starts citing someone else's qualified opinion as "utter garbage" and summoning the support of an unspecified 'majority' - it merely becomes apparent that they are unskilled at defending their own viewpoint. And, yes, it is disappointing.

Best wishes,

Andrew
 
Jurek, You keep mentioning that people have suggested treating birds as a family of dinosaurs. Can you actually cite this? I have not heard a single proposal to seriously lump all birds into one family in a Theropod paper, and although I haven't followed Theropod taxonomy super closely recently, I don't buy it

I think you might be creating straw men examples
 
The taxonomy divorced from phylogeny statement was not directed at you, but rather the idea we should employ a paraphyletic taxonomy (which yes is garbage)

If my reply came back as a bit terse, it might simply be my frustration in getting my view across, and the feeling we are going in circles here

Fair enough, Mysticete.

You're right, the debate has lost its spark and I'm clearly on the losing side anyway, if the the latest 9-primaried travesty is anything to go by. (I know you said you didn't like undiagnosable, monotypic families but they are the direct consequence of the reluctance to lump traditional families).

Cheers
 
I read this directly years ago.

Nowadays paleontologists usually don't say it explicitly. But it comes logically from the most common arrangement:
Class - reptiles (or whatever piece of it)
Order - Saurischia (reptile-hipped dinosaurs)
Suborder - Theropoda (various two-legged, mostly meat-eating dinosaurs)
Superfamily - Maniraptoria (Velociraptor and relatives)
Only then you arrive at birds, and you must put somewhere division between extinct forms and modern birds, and you arrive at a:
Family.

I know that paleontologists writing about dinosaurs put "clade Avialae" strangely always without a rank, even if other dinosaur groups are with ranks. But IMO this simply shows that paleontologists themselves are aware of the nonsense.

And funniest of all, birds really are very similar to each other compared to all the diversity of living and extinct reptiles.
 
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I think that is why you see a movement away from people naming ranks in Paleontology.

If we confine our use of ranks to modern faunas, we are usually ok...long chains of intermediate taxa linking groups are usually not present. When we start to apply it to fossil taxa, than the system breaks down completely....essentially any new intermediate fossil requires the development of new ranks or even complete rearrangement of existing ranks. That is why most people heavily invested in phylogenies that incorporate deep time name clades, but don't assign them rank.

My guess is that the person who quote that said it as a direct argument AGAINST using ranks, not actually supporting treating birds as a single family.
 
I read this directly years ago.

Nowadays paleontologists usually don't say it explicitly. But it comes logically from the most common arrangement:
Class - reptiles (or whatever piece of it)
Order - Saurischia (reptile-hipped dinosaurs)
Suborder - Theropoda (various two-legged, mostly meat-eating dinosaurs)
Superfamily - Maniraptoria (Velociraptor and relatives)
Only then you arrive at birds, and you must put somewhere division between extinct forms and modern birds, and you arrive at a:
Family.

I know that paleontologists writing about dinosaurs put "clade Avialae" strangely always without a rank, even if other dinosaur groups are with ranks. But IMO this simply shows that paleontologists themselves are aware of the nonsense.

And funniest of all, birds really are very similar to each other compared to all the diversity of living and extinct reptiles.

Right, but this classification rests on the same sort of arbitrary problem - in this case the decision where to lump or split a class. Depending on what "reptiles" means, mammalia would also be either an order or a family. That is, unless you insist on the tetrapod classes being "equivalent" to the various "fish" classes, then mammalia and aves may as well be species!

It is by far more sensible and realistic to realize that all taxonomic rankings are not created equally - especially when dealing with vastly differing time scales of evolution, not to mention differing and inconsistent rates of divergence. This is why consistent use of "class," "order," family," etc. is a quixotic endeavor - and moreso the more taxa are included.

Here is a good example of an upper level taxonomy compromise from the Center for North American Herpetology. I like this graphic because it shows clearly that the classes of vertebrates are not a side by side heirarchy, but rather are nested within one another. Yet, we can still use a sensible nomenclature without getting ruffled about which nodes belong to which rank and so on.

http://cnah.org/taxonomy.asp
 
R
Here is a good example of an upper level taxonomy compromise from the Center for North American Herpetology. I like this graphic because it shows clearly that the classes of vertebrates are not a side by side heirarchy, but rather are nested within one another. Yet, we can still use a sensible nomenclature without getting ruffled about which nodes belong to which rank and so on.

http://cnah.org/taxonomy.asp

Thanks for that Kirk,

the classification given makes far more sense than the 5 or 6 Classes within Chordata that I was taught many years ago. I have never heard of the taxonomic rank Empire before. I take it there are two 'Empires' Prokaryots and Eukaryots

Ian
 
Thanks for that Kirk,

the classification given makes far more sense than the 5 or 6 Classes within Chordata that I was taught many years ago. I have never heard of the taxonomic rank Empire before. I take it there are two 'Empires' Prokaryots and Eukaryots

Ian

At the most fundamental level there are three, look at Archaea

Niels
 
At the most fundamental level there are three, look at Archaea

Niels

Again, many thanks for information that I should have known already!

I had heard of Archea and knew they were extremophiles, but didn't realise they were classified in a seperate domain. I studied microbiology in the late 60s and early 70s but by mid 70s was working in diagnostic medical virology which I continued with until retirement last year.

So is the term domain and empire interchangeable in this setting?

Ian
 
Again, many thanks for information that I should have known already!

I had heard of Archea and knew they were extremophiles, but didn't realise they were classified in a seperate domain. I studied microbiology in the late 60s and early 70s but by mid 70s was working in diagnostic medical virology which I continued with until retirement last year.

So is the term domain and empire interchangeable in this setting?

Ian

"Domain" is the term I hear most commonly used. Frankly, I haven't seen "empire" except when the CNAH uses it, but certainly they borrowed the term from one of the references they list below the phylogeny.

And don't feel bad about not being up to date on the taxonomic status of microbiological entities - which produces titanic debates compared to any of our poor piddly squabbles concerning avian taxonomy. I went to school in the late 90s, and it was still all 5 kingdoms. I can remember a teacher first saying to me, "You may want to keep an eye on this Archaea stuff..."
 
"Domain" is the term I hear most commonly used. Frankly, I haven't seen "empire" except when the CNAH uses it, but certainly they borrowed the term from one of the references they list below the phylogeny.

And don't feel bad about not being up to date on the taxonomic status of microbiological entities - which produces titanic debates compared to any of our poor piddly squabbles concerning avian taxonomy. I went to school in the late 90s, and it was still all 5 kingdoms. I can remember a teacher first saying to me, "You may want to keep an eye on this Archaea stuff..."

As far as I know, the 5 kingdoms are still being taught in our freshman biology classes at my university...at least they were 4 years ago when I last taught that lab...while we are also working to "unteach" that in some of the upper-level classes such as evolution, where we teach them the domains and supergroups instead.

I'd never heard the term empire as an alternative to domain before.
 
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