[Taxacom] Save Order Bromeliales

[Ashley Nicholas]

Yes * sorry there Taxacomers * I was trying to stir things up a bit. I
teach my class the APG cladification and much of the evolutionary
history and morphological relationships become crystal clear in parts of
the APG system. As bizarre as the Proteales is/are (containing Nelumbo,
Platanus & the Proteas) this clade carriers important information at
so many levels and proposes many interesting micro- and
macroevolutionary questions. However, in other clades monophyly has been
taken to such an extreme that information is lost -- the Malpighiales
comes to mind. Sinking the Bromeliales into the Poales also begs the
question why not sink the Arecales (Palms) into the Poales as well? 
 
My plea yesterday was to say that the most useful classifications are
those that carry the most information. When the APG proposes these very
large orders and families I wonder if they even ask the question "by
doing this are we losing information?" However, (even though I am a
cladist at heart) we have become so obsessed with monophyly to the point
that monophyly is done for monophyly sake and clades telescope or
cascade into one another to the point where they become almost
meaningless. I believe Asphodelaceae is about to be subsumed under
Xanthorrhoeaceae. In consequence I shall probably be left fielding
questions from horticulturalists, game parks and wildlife managers (in
the depths of places like Botswana) asking me to explain why s/he must
now place the Aloes under a family they have never heard of. In response
I have to shrug my shoulders and say "well they come from a common
ancestor." as if that is all the justification I need. An ecologist
colleague of mine, when I told him that Agapanthaceae and Alliaceae
might be sunk under the Amaryllidaceae, responded somewhat sarcastically
".... and this helps me how?" 
 
If paraphyly is the price we have to pay for making classifications
rich in information again then may be we should do it. Although having
said this excessive paraphyly can also cause loss of information. What a
pity that Ashlock has not been taken more seriously, especially by the
botanists.  
 
*------------ Ashley
 

>>> On 2011/10/04 at 03:47, in message
<COL103-DS14E234E08EF510F42092C7A0FB0 at phx.gbl>, Kenneth Kinman
<kennethkinman at webtv.net> wrote:


Hi Richard and Ashley,
       I agree with what Richard, except for APG being "the" bugbear
of
our times.  In my opinion, the real bugbears are vertebrate
paleontologists who are the main ones trying to shove PhyloCode down
our
throats.  Largely comprised of dinosaurologists who study reptiles,
but
won't recognize a Class Reptilia.   
      At least the APG is reasonable enough that I actually have some
hope that they might reverse some of their ordinal lumping eventually.
Arguing with the PhyloCode dinosaurologists is so hopeless that it
seems
the epitome of bugbear nightmares.  And like you said, APG has done a
lot more good than harm.  The dinosaur PhyloCoders seem to have done a
lot less good and a lot more harm.    
     Anyway, I definitely agree with Ashley that dumping Bromeliales
into Poales was not helpful for most endusers.  But as I said above, I
believe the endusers of botany have a better chance of influencing APG
than vertebrate endusers have much of chance with the main PhyloCoder
crowd.         
     -----------Ken              
  
===================================
Richard wrote:              
What can I say, Ken? APG is the bugbear of our times, not because it
is
all bad. That would be too much to ask. It mixes together plenty of
good, new advances with lumping or splitting because of artificial
systems of classification, i.e. holophyly, as you say, and grouping by
molecular continuity and splits (rather than a combination of that
plus
clear cases of macroevolution). 
Linnaean classification does not directly represent either cladistic
nesting or macroevolution, but we can use its nesting and contiguity
(read "lists") of names to group evolutionarily related taxa without
eliminating names because of paraphyly. Thus, the problem that
Linnaean
classification does not directly reflect processes in nature can work
in
its favor by providing a neutral ground representing a diversity of
apprehensions of evolutionary processes.  



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