DANGER: PhyloCode

[Ken Kinman]

Dear All,
     I have previously said that PhyloCode is probably coming, like it or
not, and I thought it prudent to make suggestions on making it minimally
disruptive and maximally useful.  However, what I have recently learned has
changed all that.
     PhyloCode is a clear and present danger to the stability of
nomenclature, and it should be resisted at every opportunity.  The authors
of PhyloCode certainly have good intentions, but what some strict cladists
are now doing with it speaks volumes about the repercussions that will
inevitably follow (perhaps far worse than even Benton imagined).
     In the recently published "Ostrom" Proceedings (of a conference held at
Yale), the first two chapters discuss various proposed new clade names for
theropods and their transition into birds.  The most alarming are
apomorphy-based taxa, based on different types of feathers:
         Avifilopluma
         Avipinna
         Aviremigia
         Aviplumosa
     How serious scientists could even conceive of such clade names is
baffling.  But that is just the beginning of the list of proposed clade
names:  Panaves, Metatheropoda, Aptilonia, Eoptilonia, Dromavialae,
Chuniaoia, Aerialae, Orthornithes, and so on.  How many of these would end
up as rejects, like Ornithosuchia (which was found to exclude
Ornithosuchus), or Ornithodira (which may well be polyphyletic).
     Thomas Holtz' clade Arctometatarsalia has been found to be based on a
convergent functional character, and Holtz also recently conceded that his
Bullatosauria appears to be based on convergence in a skull structure.
Other "tarsal" clades are suspicious, like Crocodylotarsi, and who knows if
Ornithotarsi and Avemetatarsalia will survive future cladistic scrutiny.  If
"enigmosauria" is polyphyletic, as I believe it is, hopefully my "not
strictly parsimonious" approach has detected it before it was formally named
and cladistically defined.  Strict parsimony seems to have been the problem
in that case, and certainly not the "panacea" that strict cladists make it
out to be.
     Anyway, it is becoming increasingly clear that the strictly cladistic
approach (and PhyloCode in particular) is a nomenclatural house of cards,
and the inflationary pressure to name perceived clades is already spirally
out of control in theropod systematics.  PhyloCode will merely provide a
bureaucratic mantle which will undoubtedly encourage workers to prematurely
name large numbers of new "clades", and the dinosaurs alone will hopelessly
clog the nomenclatural system in red tape.
      I cannot in good conscience condone this kind of activity, and I will
not sit passively and watch such a disaster unfold.  I am henceforth
actively opposing any implementation of a PhyloCode, and I will no longer
make any suggestions for its improvement, in the vain hope that it might
mitigate some of the harmful effects.
     I would encourage others to resist PhyloCode (at least the bloated
bureaucratic formulation that is presently being offered) and to resist the
wholesale creation of new clade names that is clearly a threat to our
nomenclatural system.  I find these latest developments deeply disturbing.
          ----- Sincerely, Ken Kinman




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