[Taxacom] Catalog of Life Taxonomic Tree

[Kenneth Kinman]

Hi Stephen,      And that is why I wouldn't use the Catalog of Life to construct a Tree of Life.  A set of nested "bushes" isn't really much of tree.                             ------------Ken----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2016 00:01:49 +0000
> From: stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz
> To: kinman at hotmail.com; tonyrees49 at gmail.com
> CC: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu; dstoner at acis.ufl.edu
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Catalog of Life Taxonomic Tree
> 
> The fundamental problem here is the relationship between taxonomy and phylogeny. It *really* isn't appropriate for the likes of CoL to be worrying about phylogeny, being, as it is, so very inconclusive and unstable. A "catalogue of life" should try to play down phylogeny as much as it can, and focus instead on cataloguing life. But, as per usual, everybody wants everything optimised to everything that they could possibly want, inevitably resulting in little more than one big mess!
> 
> Stephen
> 
> --------------------------------------------
> On Fri, 26/2/16, Tony Rees <tonyrees49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>  Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Catalog of Life Taxonomic Tree
>  To: "Kenneth Kinman" <kinman at hotmail.com>
>  Cc: "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>, "Stoner, Dan" <dstoner at acis.ufl.edu>
>  Received: Friday, 26 February, 2016, 11:41 AM
>  
>  Hi Ken, Dan et al., the
>  "missing" algal phyla and classes
>  (photosynthetic
>  protists and their
>  relatives) are no longer in Cat. of Life since they were
>  formerly supplied from AlgaeBase which is no
>  longer a CoL partner. So yes,
>  I would
>  imagine that this tree does reflect present CoL coverage.
>  
>  Regards - Tony
>  
>  Tony Rees, New South Wales,
>  Australia
>  https://about.me/TonyRees
>