I hope that we might see the day when the American Ornithological Society
will publish its latest interpretation of taxonomy in an appropriate graphical
format, that provides at least a 3-D visualization of the taxonomic
relationships among species, genera, and families.
Joel
Wayne Hoffman wrote:
Hi -
One of the difficulties here is that when you take a 4-dimensional phylogenetic
tree and try to reduce it to a single-dimension list (taxonomic sequence), you
inevitably end up with some species next to very distant relatives. Imagine a
section of the tree with a deep branching point (longer ago) and then recent
radiation into multiple species on both branches from that early division. To
make a checklist sequence you have to come up with an order for the species on
one side (say left) of that old branching point, then you have to jump over to
the right branch and place the first of its species immediately after the last
from the left branch. There are conventions for how to sequence within the
branches and how to sequence the deeper branches relative to each other, but
many of these cannot really reflect evolutionary history.
Wayne
--
Joel Geier
Camp Adair area north of Corvallis
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