A temporal banding approach for consistent taxonomic ranking above the species level

Abstract

Comparable taxonomic ranks within clades can facilitate more consistent classifications and objective comparisons among taxa. Here we use a temporal approach to identify taxonomic ranks. This is an extension of the temporal banding approach including a Temporal Error Score that finds an objective cut-off for each taxonomic rank using information for the current classification. We illustrate this method using a data set of the lichenized fungal family Parmeliaceae. To assess its performance, we simulated the effect of taxon sampling and compared our method with the other temporal banding method. For our sampled phylogeny, 11 of the 12 included families remained intact and 55 genera were confirmed, whereas 32 genera were lumped and 15 genera were split. Taxon sampling impacted the method at the genus level, whereas yielded only insignificant changes at the family level. The other available temporal approach also gives a similar cutoff point to our method. Our approach to identify taxonomic ranks enables taxonomists to revise and propose classifications on an objective basis, changing ranks of clades only when inconsistent with most taxa in a phylogenetic tree. An R script to find the time point with the minimal temporal error is provided.

Emmanuelia, a new genus of lobarioid lichen-forming fungi (Ascomycota: Peltigerales): phylogeny and synopsis of accepted species

“…In addition to the profound changes in generic concepts, lobarioid lichens were not spared from a recent systematic revision at the family level: in a recent study by Kraichak et al (2018), under a temporal-banding proposal (Avise & Johns 1999;Kraichak et al 2017), the authors proposed treating the families Lobariaceae and Nephromataceae as synonyms of Peltigeraceae. While the mechanistic approach of temporal banding classifications has been criticized, the broad agreement in morphological, anatomical and chemical features and the absence of a clear diagnostic character for each of the three previously separated families justifies this revised classification (Lücking 2019).…”

<p class="ZootaxaTitle">Hurdles in fungal taxonomy: Effectiveness of recent methods in discriminating taxa

“…Taxonomy is a part of the scientific practice that deals with naming, describing and classifying fungal species (Katoch & Kapoor 2014). The current classification system, which is based on Linnaean ranks, has been criticized by many taxonomists and a new dialogue has been opened for the possibility of moving toward a rankless taxonomic framework or applying combined balanced quantitative methods to determine ranks, such as applying temporal banding and phenotypic disparity (Vasilyeva & Stephenson 2010;Casiraghi et al 2016;Kraichak et al 2017;Kraichak et al 2018;Lücking 2019). Here, we discuss three challenges to both traditional morphology and molecular phylogenetics.…”

Different diversification histories in tropical and temperate lineages in the ascomycete subfamily Protoparmelioideae (Parmeliaceae)

“…Within Lecanoromycetes , Parmeliaceae is the largest family of lichenised fungi consisting of approximately 2,500–3,000 species. This family has recently been divided into two subfamilies, Protoparmelioideae and Parmelioideae ( Divakar et al 2017 , Kraichak et al 2017 ). Although the diversification patterns of Parmelioideae and various clades within Parmelioideae are well-studied ( Amo de Paz et al 2011 , Leavitt et al 2012 , Divakar et al 2015 ), the diversification patterns of Protoparmelioideae remain unexplored.…”