Do the views of users of taxonomic output count for anything?

Brickell, Christopher D.; Crawley, Michael J.; Cullen, J. R.; Frodin, David G.; Gardner, Martin; Grey-Wilson, C.; Hillier, John K.; Knees, S. G.; Lancaster, Roy; Mathew, Brian F.; Matthews, Victoria A.; Miller, Tony; Noltie, Henry F.; Norton, Sylvia; Oakeley, Henry J.; Richards, John R.; Woodhead, Jon

doi:10.1002/tax.574001

Cited by 14 publications

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“…Because of shared ancestry, paraphyletic taxa often have high phenotypic similarity and information content. It is no surprise that practice-oriented taxonomists (Brummitt, 2002(Brummitt, , 2006(Brummitt, , 2008Farjon, 2005Farjon, , 2007 and users (Brickell & al., 2008;Yoon, 2009) are hesitant to accept classifications that admit only holophyletic taxa. For a better visualization of the evolutionary status of a class in relation to a tree, "Besseyan cactus trees" (Zander, 2008) or a recently proposed method of mapping a taxon onto a phylogenetic tree (Zander, 2010) can be helpful.…”

Section: Criteria and Methods For Evolutionary Classificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paraphyletic groups as natural units of biological classification

Hörandl

Stuessy

2010

TAXON

142

110

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Despite the broad acceptance of phylogenetic principles in biological classification, a fundamental question still exists on how to classify paraphyletic groups. Much of the controversy appears due to (1) historical shifts in terminology and definitions, (2) neglect of focusing on evolutionary processes for understanding origins of natural taxa, (3) a narrow perspective on dimensions involved with reconstructing phylogeny, and (4) acceptance of lower levels of information content and practicability as a trade‐off for ease of arriving at formal classifications. Monophyly in evolutionary biology originally had a broader definition, that of describing a group with common ancestry. This definition thus includes both paraphyletic and monophyletic groups in the sense of Hennig. We advocate returning to a broader definition, supporting use of Ashlock's term holophyly as replacement for monophyly s.str. By reviewing processes involved in the production of phylogenetic patterns (budding, merging, and splitting), we demonstrate that paraphyly is a natural transitional stage in the evolution of taxa, and that it occurs regularly along with holophyly. When a new holophyletic group arises, it usually coexists for some time with its paraphyletic stem group. Paraphyly and holophyly, therefore, represent relational and temporal evolutionary stages. Paraphyletic groups exist at all levels of diversification in all kingdoms of eukaryotes, and they have traditionally been recognized because of their descent‐based similarity. We review different methodological approaches for recognition of monophyletic groups s.l. (i.e., both holophyletic and paraphyletic), which are essential for discriminating from polyphyly that is unacceptable in classification. For arriving at taxonomic decisions, natural processes, information content, and practicability are essential criteria. We stress using shared descent as a primary grouping principle, but also emphasize the importance of degrees of divergence plus similarity (cohesiveness of evolutionary features) as additional criteria for classification.

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Section: Criteria and Methods For Evolutionary Classificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paraphyletic groups as natural units of biological classification

Hörandl

Stuessy

2010

TAXON

142

110

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“…Examples are the birds, which would no longer be birds, but dinosaurs (Ho¨randl and Stuessy, 2010), or the tetrapods, which would become fish. Similarly, Brummitt (2006) argues that ''the cladistic approach fails because it does not permit recognition of newly evolved taxa'', and comparable sentiments have been expressed in other contributions (Brummitt, 2002;Ho¨randl, 2007;Zander, 2007;Brickell et al, 2008). This concern betrays quite a distressing misunderstanding of what follows from cladistic classification.…”

Section: Members Of a Paraphyletic Group Are Unaffected By The Evolutmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…They also explicitly name stability and ease of information storage and retrieval as the (only, it is implied) two criteria for a good classification. From a horticultural perspective, the symplesiomorphies of paraphyletic groups may in some cases be very important (Brickell et al., 2008). For related reasons, it is often desirable to simply have a name for paraphyletic groups, and calling them clade A excluding clade B would be impractical (Brummitt, 2002).…”

Section: Practicability Usefulness and Predictive Value Of A Classifmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The insistence on only accepting monophyletic taxa has been variously characterized as ''almost a religion'' (Sosef, 1997;Brummitt, 2002), ''fundamentalist'' (Brickell et al, 2008) or ''a spurious dictum, more appropriate to a religious sect than to science'' (Farjon, 2007). This allegation appears to be based on a very strange understanding of what science is.…”

Section: A Phylogenetic System Is Not a Classificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite this, controversy about the approach persists, and arguments are regularly advanced by plant taxonomists that the acceptance of paraphyletic taxa would be desirable or even logically unavoidable (e.g. Brummitt, 2002Brummitt, , 2003Brummitt, , 2006Brummitt, , 2008Nordal and Stedje, 2005;Ho¨randl, 2006Ho¨randl, , 2007Ho¨randl, , 2010Zander, 2007;Brickell et al, 2008;Ho¨randl and Stuessy, 2010).…”

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Fallacies and false premises—a critical assessment of the arguments for the recognition of paraphyletic taxa in botany

Schmidt‐Lebuhn¹

2011

Cladistics

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One of the central controversies in contemporary taxonomy and systematics revolves around whether to accept or to reject paraphyletic taxa. The present review is the result of a survey of the ongoing discussion in botany over the past ca. 15 years, and attempts to systematically and critically assess all individual arguments presented for the formal recognition of paraphyletic groups in the classification of life. Where arguments are found to be without merit, rebuttals are presented in the hope of excluding them from further discussion, which can then concentrate on those that have merit. Where arguments are found to be sound, their implications and possible solutions are discussed. The controversy around paraphyletic taxa can be broken down into three questions: whether their rejection or acceptance would lead to a classification better reflecting patterns of biological diversity and evolutionary history; whether their rejection or acceptance would lead to a more practical, useful and predictive classification; and whether their rejection is compatible with ranked and binary Linnaean taxonomy. All available arguments for paraphyletic taxa relating to the first question are demonstrated to be based on various logical fallacies or false premises, especially misunderstandings of the principles of phylogenetic systematics. The issue of usefulness is harder to resolve, as different classifications serve different needs. It is presumably unavoidable but also preferable that phylogenetic and non‐phylogenetic ways of classifying species continue to coexist, serving different needs. Finally, an insistence on monophyletic taxa is found to be incompatible with binary taxonomy under a set of very specific circumstances and assumptions whose presence and accuracy are not universally accepted. © The Willi Hennig Society 2011.

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Beyond cladistics: Extending evolutionary classifications into deeper time levels

Hörandl

2010

TAXON

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Do the views of users of taxonomic output count for anything?

Cited by 14 publications

References 0 publications

Paraphyletic groups as natural units of biological classification

Paraphyletic groups as natural units of biological classification

Fallacies and false premises—a critical assessment of the arguments for the recognition of paraphyletic taxa in botany

Beyond cladistics: Extending evolutionary classifications into deeper time levels

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