[Taxacom] New paper: Ruggiero et al. "A Higher Level Classification of All Living Organisms"

[Kenneth Kinman]

Hi Tony and Robin,                         I have to disagree.  I don't think this was inevitable (or wise or brave).  We have long known (since Archaeopteryx) that birds evolved from reptiles, but that is not a good reason to subsume one into the other.  By such reasoning, we could argue that Amphibia and the other tetrapod classes should be subsumed into Sarcopterygii.  Or subsuming all the higher plant phyla into Phylum Charophyta.  Or how about dumping all the insects into the Crustacea.  Such reasoning is just as unwise with respect to Aves as it is with these and many other examples.  So I don't think it is inevitable that birds have to be dumped in with their reptile (dinosaur) ancestors, any more than it is would be inevitable that we dump tetrapods in with the sarcopterygian fish (or Insecta into Crustacea).                            ----------------Ken
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> From: releech at telus.net
> To: tonyrees49 at gmail.com; kinman at hotmail.com
> CC: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: RE: [Taxacom] New paper: Ruggiero et al. "A Higher Level Classification of All Living Organisms"
> Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2015 10:01:56 -0600
> 
> Tony, 
> Probably inevitable - the more we find out, the closer the two (reptiles and birds) seem to be. 
> Robi
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Taxacom [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Tony Rees
> Sent: July-09-15 1:10 AM
> To: Kenneth Kinman
> Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] New paper: Ruggiero et al. "A Higher Level Classification of All Living Organisms"
> 
> I note that (class) Aves has now been subsumed into class Reptilia for the first time - brave or inevitable??
> 
> - Tony
> 
> On Thu, Jul 9, 2015 at 1:26 PM, Kenneth Kinman <kinman at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Stephen,                         My biggest problem with this
> > classification (and many others) is that the subtaxa within a taxon 
> > are alphabetically arranged, which automatically and immediately 
> > affects their naturalness from the start.  Paleognathae is thus placed 
> > after Neognathae, and worse yet Aves is placed before all the other 
> > reptiles.  The Superclass Angiospermae is a mess, which for some 
> > reason they only classify as a single Class.  Therefore, the subtaxa 
> > are an unnatural mess.  Although I nitpick about the details of the 
> > cladistic classifications of angiosperms, at least they are fairly natural (even with their unnatural rejection of a
> > few very natural and useful taxa).                              Neomycota
> > is listed as Dikarya, so it comes before Eomycota.  And they don't 
> > even mention the name Eumycota (which has always been more informative 
> > than "Fungi").  The mammal orders Cingulata and Pilosa aren't listed 
> > together at all, and how many non-mammalogists even know what animals 
> > those taxa include?  And totally separating Archaebacteria from their 
> > relatives Posibacteria is a horrible oversight that has plagued 
> > classifications for well over 20 years.
> > ---------------Ken----------------------------------------------------
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > --------------------------------------
> >
> > > Date: Wed, 8 Jul 2015 18:11:57 -0700
> > > From: stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz
> > > To: Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu; tonyrees49 at gmail.com
> > > Subject: Re: [Taxacom] New paper: Ruggiero et al. "A Higher Level
> >  Classification of All Living Organisms"
> > >
> > > The problem with it being "followed in future by both ITIS and 
> > > Catalogue
> > of Life" is that new developments, based on scientific evidence, will 
> > not be considered (at least not until some big revised version of the 
> > present paper is published). So, bioinformatics and science part ways for a while.
> > It is really just a case of "choose your own classification", and if 
> > you wish to choose to follow Ruggiero et al.'s paper, you can, but 
> > there may be better alternatives.
> > >
> > > Stephen
> > >
> > > --------------------------------------------
> > > On Thu, 9/7/15, Tony Rees <tonyrees49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >  Subject: [Taxacom] New paper: Ruggiero et al. "A Higher Level
> > Classification of All Living Organisms"
> > >  To: "taxacom" <Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
> > >  Received: Thursday, 9 July, 2015, 12:52 PM
> > >
> > >  Dear Taxacomers,
> > >
> > >  Since I did not see this mentioned on Taxacom earlier  (perhaps I 
> > > missed  it), list members may be interested to know that Michael  
> > > Ruggiero et al.'s  paper "A Higher Level Classification of All 
> > > Living  Organisms" has been out  in PLOS One since 20 April 2015, 
> > > the link is here:
> > >
> > >
> > http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0119248
> > >
> > >  This is an internally consistent treatment of "all" extant
> > >  taxa down to the
> > >  level of Order (in most cases), to be followed in future by
> > >  both ITIS and
> > >  Catalogue of Life I understand. For those interested in
> > >  going further to
> > >  the level of family, I have come across a spreadsheet with
> > >  the latter
> > >  information prepared by the same authors (possibly slightly
> > >  earlier
> > >  version) labelled "GGI family data" at http://ggi.eol.org/downloads .
> > >
> > >  Of course the above treatments do not include fossil
> > >  orders/families but
> > >  maybe these will be in scope at some point in the future
> > >  (??)
> > >
> > >  Hoping this is of interest to at least some Taxacom
> > >  readers,
> > >
> > >  Best regards - Tony Rees, New South Wales, Australia
> > >  _______________________________________________