Phylogenetic hypotheses, taxa and nomina in zoology

Zootaxa ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 1950 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALAIN DUBOIS
Keyword(s):  
Zoological Nomenclature ◽  
Strong Increase ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Linnaean System ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cladistic Analyses ◽  
Is Theory ◽  
Phylogenetic Hypotheses ◽  
Taxonomic Categories

Taxonomic paradigms have changed several times during the history of taxonomy, yet a single nomenclatural system, socalled Linnaean, has remained in force all along. It is theory-free regarding taxonomy as it relies on ostensional allocation of nomina to taxa, rather than on intensional definitions of nomina (e.g., “phylogenetic definitions”). Nomina are not descriptions, definitions or theories but simple labels designating taxa. Both for theoretical and practical reasons, this system should be maintained for the allocation and validity of nomina under a cladistic taxonomic paradigm. Whereas taxa can be cladistically defined by apognoses or cladognoses, nomina should remain attached to taxa through onomatophores, combined in some cases with a Principle of Coordination. Under such a system, the allocation of nomina to taxa is automatic, unambiguous and universal, and nomenclature does not infringe upon taxonomic freedom. However, to avoid misunderstandings and to solve some current problems, the current Code of zoological nomenclature should be improved in several respects. The distinction should be made clear between taxonomic categories, which have biological definitions, and nomenclatural ranks, which do not, as they give only a position in a nomenclatural hierarchy: if used consistently under a cladistic paradigm, they simply allow to express hypotheses about successive branchings and sistertaxa relationships. Taxa referred to a given rank in different groups cannot therefore be considered equivalent by any biological criterion. The nomenclatural rules should cover the whole taxonomic hierarchy, which is currently not the case in zoology. The recent strong increase in the number of higher taxa which results from cladistic analyses may quickly lead to chaos and problems in communication if the nomina of these taxa continue to be based on personal tastes and opinions. There is an urgent need for the zoological Code to cover these nomina with automatic and stringent rules leaving no place to subjective interpretation. Just like for those currently covered by the Code, the status of these nomina should be established in their first publication (nomenclatural founder effect). The Code should be protected against alternative nomenclatural systems by rejecting as unavailable all nomina and nomenclatural acts published without respecting the basic Linnaean system of nomenclatural hierarchy of ranks.

Phylogeny, taxonomy and nomenclature:the problem of taxonomic categories and of nomenclatural ranks

Zootaxa ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 1519 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALAIN DUBOIS
Keyword(s):  
Zoological Nomenclature ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Biodiversity Crisis ◽  
Storage And Retrieval ◽  
Taxonomic Impediment ◽  
Living Species ◽  
Is Theory ◽  
Time And Energy ◽  
New Situation ◽  
Taxonomic Categories

The use of ranks and nominal-series in zoological nomenclature has recently been challenged by some authors who support unranked systems of nomenclature. It is here shown that this criticism is based on a double misunderstanding: (1) the confusion between nomenclatural ranks and taxonomic categories; (2) the request for a monosemic nomenclatural system, not for scientific reasons, but to please non-taxonomists, especially customers of the web. It is here argued that nomenclatural ranks and taxonomic categories should be clearly distinguished and designated by different terms, and that the Code should be modified in order to make this distinction clear. Whereas taxonomic categories have biological definitions, nomenclatural ranks do not, as they express only a position in a taxonomic hierarchy. If used consistently (which is not always the case), the system of nomenclatural ranks is very useful for the storage and retrieval of taxonomic and phylogenetic information. Taxa referred to a given rank in different groups cannot therefore be considered equivalent by any criterion, so that using ranks for comparisons between taxa (e.g., for biodiversity richness assessment) is irrelevant and misleading. Although the current Code needs to be improved in several respects, the superiority of this nomenclatural system, which is theory-free regarding taxonomy as it relies on ostensional allocation of nomina to taxa rather than on intensional definitions of nomina, is again stressed. It is suggested that all taxonomists should follow the Code for the allocation and validity of nomina, whatever taxonomic theory they favour, and in particular whatever kinds of definitions or diagnoses they wish to use for taxa. This would avoid the considerable loss of manpower, time and energy that would be required by the implementation of a new nomenclatural system (e.g., in order to require “phylogenetic definitions” for nomina, or to make nomenclature fully monosemic), and the confusion that would result for most users of nomina. The new paradigm imposed to biology by the combination of the taxonomic impediment and of the biodiversity crisis requires from taxonomists, who are already considerably much less numerous than required by this new situation, to concentrate on what should be their priority at the beginning of the century of extinctions, namely the inventory of the living species of our planet before they get extinct.

The status of Gideon Mantell's “first” Iguanodon tooth in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

1997 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN C. YALDWYN ◽  
GARRY J. TEE ◽  
ALAN P. MASON
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Charles Lyell ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Gideon Mantell

A worn Iguanodon tooth from Cuckfield, Sussex, illustrated by Mantell in 1827, 1839, 1848 and 1851, was labelled by Mantell as the first tooth sent to Baron Cuvier in 1823 and acknowledged as such by Sir Charles Lyell. The labelled tooth was taken to New Zealand by Gideon's son Walter in 1859. It was deposited in a forerunner of the Museum of New Zealand, Wellington in 1865 and is still in the Museum, mounted on a card bearing annotations by both Gideon Mantell and Lyell. The history of the Gideon and Walter Mantell collection in the Museum of New Zealand is outlined, and the Iguanodon tooth and its labels are described and illustrated. This is the very tooth which Baron Cuvier first identified as a rhinoceros incisor on the evening of 28 June 1823.

The European Charter of Local Self-Government

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Himsworth
Keyword(s):  
Critical Study ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Future Prospects ◽  
Council Of Europe ◽  
International Treaty ◽  
Additional Protocol ◽  
Domestic Courts ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Regional Authorities

The first critical study of the 1985 international treaty that guarantees the status of local self-government (local autonomy). Chris Himsworth analyses the text of the 1985 European Charter of Local Self-Government and its Additional Protocol; traces the Charter’s historical emergence; and explains how it has been applied and interpreted, especially in a process of monitoring/treaty enforcement by the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities but also in domestic courts, throughout Europe. Locating the Charter’s own history within the broader recent history of the Council of Europe and the European Union, the book closes with an assessment of the Charter’s future prospects.

A Universe of Societies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Didier Debaise
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Relations ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Temporal And Spatial

Which kind of relation exists between a stone, a cloud, a dog, and a human? Is nature made of distinct domains and layers or does it form a vast unity from which all beings emerge? Refusing at once a reductionist, physicalist approach as well as a vitalistic one, Whitehead affirms that « everything is a society » This chapter consequently questions the status of different domains which together compose nature by employing the concept of society. The first part traces the history of this notion notably with reference to the two thinkers fundamental to Whitehead: Leibniz and Locke; the second part defines the temporal and spatial relations of societies; and the third explores the differences between physical, biological, and psychical forms of existence as well as their respective ways of relating to environments. The chapter thus tackles the status of nature and its domains.

Somewhere between Human, Nonhuman, and Woman

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 21-51
Author(s):  
Debashree Mukherjee
Keyword(s):  
Object Relations ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
The South ◽  
Hunger Strike ◽  
Cultural Events ◽  
Production Experience ◽  
Human Object ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of

In 1939, at the height of her stardom, the actress Shanta Apte went on a spectacular hunger strike in protest against her employers at Prabhat Studios in Poona, India. The following year, Apte wrote a harsh polemic against the extractive nature of the film industry. In Jaau Mi Cinemaat? (Should I Join the Movies?, 1940), she highlighted the durational depletion of the human body that is specific to acting work. This article interrogates these two unprecedented cultural events—a strike and a book—opening them up toward a history of embodiment as production experience. It embeds Apte's emphasis on exhaustion within contemporaneous debates on female stardom, industrial fatigue, and the status of cinema as work. Reading Apte's remarkable activism as theory from the South helps us rethink the meanings of embodiment, labor, materiality, inequality, resistance, and human-object relations in cinema.

Victorian Pain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Ablow
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Victorian Literature ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Harriet Martineau ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
First Time

The nineteenth century introduced developments in science and medicine that made the eradication of pain conceivable for the first time. This new understanding of pain brought with it a complex set of moral and philosophical dilemmas. If pain serves no obvious purpose, how do we reconcile its existence with a well-ordered universe? Examining how writers of the day engaged with such questions, this book offers a compelling new literary and philosophical history of modern pain. The book provides close readings of novelists Charlotte Brontë and Thomas Hardy and political and natural philosophers John Stuart Mill, Harriet Martineau, and Charles Darwin, as well as a variety of medical, scientific, and popular writers of the Victorian age. The book explores how discussions of pain served as investigations into the status of persons and the nature and parameters of social life. No longer conceivable as divine trial or punishment, pain in the nineteenth century came to seem instead like a historical accident suggesting little or nothing about the individual who suffers. A landmark study of Victorian literature and the history of pain, the book shows how these writers came to see pain as a social as well as a personal problem. Rather than simply self-evident to the sufferer and unknowable to anyone else, pain was also understood to be produced between persons—and even, perhaps, by the fictions they read.

The Legal Status of Local Government in South Africa under the New Constitutional Dispensation

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mbuzeni Mathenjwa
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Case Law ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic ◽  
First Time

The history of local government in South Africa dates back to a time during the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910. With regard to the status of local government, the Union of South Africa Act placed local government under the jurisdiction of the provinces. The status of local government was not changed by the formation of the Republic of South Africa in 1961 because local government was placed under the further jurisdiction of the provinces. Local government was enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa arguably for the first time in 1993. Under the interim Constitution local government was rendered autonomous and empowered to regulate its affairs. Local government was further enshrined in the final Constitution of 1996, which commenced on 4 February 1997. The Constitution refers to local government together with the national and provincial governments as spheres of government which are distinctive, interdependent and interrelated. This article discusses the autonomy of local government under the 1996 Constitution. This it does by analysing case law on the evolution of the status of local government. The discussion on the powers and functions of local government explains the scheme by which government powers are allocated, where the 1996 Constitution distributes powers to the different spheres of government. Finally, a conclusion is drawn on the legal status of local government within the new constitutional dispensation.

Can an Adulteress Save Jesus? the Pericope Adulterae, Feminist Interpretation, and the Limits of Narrative Agency

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Knust
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Feminist Interpretation ◽  
Narrative Agency ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of

The pericope adulterae (John 7:53–8:11) is often interpreted as an inherently feminist story, one that validates women’s humanity in the face of a patriarchal order determined to reduce sexual sinners and women more generally to the status of object. Reading this story within a framework of queer narratology, however, leads to a different point of view, one that challenges the consequences of seeking rescue from a god and a text that are both quite willing to forge male homosocial bonds at a woman’s expense. As the history of this story also shows, texts and their meanings remain unsettled and therefore open to further unpredictable and contingent elaboration. Pondering my own feminist commitments, I attempt to imagine a world and a story where a woman is a person and Jesus is in need of rescue. Perhaps such a world is possible. Or perhaps it is not.

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