nameless taxonomy (Re: Time to update taxonomy?)

[Frederick W. Schueler]

Doug Yanega wrote:

>  What Hebert is proposing is nameless taxonomy. Each
> organism would be known only by its DNA sequence, or an arbitrary
> code number, so no one would actually need any specimens, nor a
> scheme of classification. Relationships would be determined by
> sequence divergence, giving a tidy cladogram, and the problem of
> specimens would be resolved by taking a photo of each organism before
> it was sequenced.

* so who's going to decide which genes to sequence? Or does every
species of midge and Nemotode require a Human Genome Project, so that
such a decison isn't necessary? So long as different sequencers sequence
different chunks of the genome, the results will still have to be bound
together by conventional names and specimens.

fred.
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