Nun, lange war es ankündigt und endlich vor ein paar Tagen war es soweit. Eine Gegendarstellung zu den geänderten Synonmisierungen diverser Sozialparasitengattungen ist nun veröffentlicht worden. Es empfiehlt sich, das Paper zu lesen, da dort eine ausführliche und interessante Darstellung über die derzeitigen Probleme in der Systematik findet. Es ist nicht sonderlich lang, und relativ gut lesbar.
Viele der Autoren sind Euch sicher schon mal begegnet. Das Paper hat nicht so viele Co-Authoren weil der Arbeitsaufwand sehr groß war, sondern ist eher als eine Art demokratischer Aufruf/Stellungnahme zu betrachten.
B. Seifert, A. Buschinger, A. Aldawood, V. Antonova, H. Bharti, L. Borowiec, W. Dekoninck, D. Dubovikoff, X. Espadaler, J. Flegr, C. Georgiadis, J. Heinze, R. Neumeyer, F. Ødegaard, J. Oettler, A. Radchenko, R. Schultz, M. Sharaf, J. Trager, A. Vesnić, M. Wiezik, H. Zettel (2016): Banning paraphylies and executing Linnaean taxonomy is discordant and reduces the evolutionary and semantic information content of biological nomenclature. Insectes Sociaux, pp 1-6 First online: 19 March
Spannend ist nun die Reaktion der vielen Myrmekologen zu dem Thema. Einer der Autoren, James Trager, schrieb dazu auf Facebook:
Full disclosure: I am a way-down-the-list "coauthor" on this paper. My main function was to edit the English. But to be honest, it is difficult for me get exercised enough to have a strong opinion on this matter. I understand and appreciate the arguments of both what might be called the practical taxonomists who wrote this, and of the strictly evolutionary taxonomists led by Phil Ward, et al., who I believe also have a published statement on the matter that should be linked here as well.
The recent work on the classification of Camponotini points well to the complexities of the matter. I think no one among us would want to go back to sinking Colobopsis, for which the larval, male and genetic characteristics clearly define them, back into Camponotus. Yet some of those South Pacific Colobopsis seriously strain the worker-morphology definitions of the taxon.
Er nimmt also eher den "politischen Mittelweg".
Alex Wild, welcher aus Ward's Lab hervorging, bleibt dabei ziemlich entschieden auf der Seite von Ward et. al zu dem Thema:
http://www.myrmecos.net/2016/03/23/how- ... rite-ants/
But a number of myrmecologists do not approve of their favorite ants losing their names, and struck back with a strongly worded opinion in Insectes Sociaux this week:
We contend that banning all paraphyletic groups while simultaneously executing binominal Linnaean nomenclature results in a taxonomy going off the rails.
The dissenting authors make a lengthy argument about information content, evolution, and practicality, but the logic essentially boils down to, “the sunk genera look different, and we feel it more useful that the difference is reflected in a unique name.” If this argument looks familiar, that is because it is the case put forth by Ernst Mayr’s “Evolutionary Taxonomy” school in the 1960s and 70s. This was not a winning argument. Most biologists found disagreements about trait differences subjective compared to the relatively clarity of ancestry, and taxonomists today generally agree that recognizing paraphyletic groups is more confusing that the alternatives.
I have little personal experience with the genera in question. From my perspective as an outsider, I had to look up Epimyrma in Bolton’s catalogue to figure out what kind of an ant it was. Formicine? Myrmicine? Had I known it was basically a parasitic Temnothorax, I’d have been that much ahead of the game. Monophyly is information; paraphyly less so. But utility is a question of perspective and context, I suppose, and I can empathize that those who regularly work with these ants might find treating them as congeners as awkward as attending a party where everyone is named Jayden.
Still, given the volumes of vituperative ink spilled a half-century ago in the cladism wars, and the weight of the pro-monophyly consensus among all biologists, I suspect this renegade group of ant scientists will be fighting an uphill battle.
Grüße, Phil
Statistik: Verfasst von Phil — Mi 23. Mär 2016, 21:41