Talk:Species format discussion

From Palaeos

Ranks

Do we need all this rank stuff? David Marjanović 13:27, 8 May 2008 (PDT)

I would say not if you don't want to. I don't generally use it on the pages I've written where I generally just use "parent taxa" and "daughter taxa", then list parent taxa from most to least inclusive. Mind you, I'll generally only include two or three parent taxa in this format, because if you list too many it just gets ugly. The pages on Selaginella and Acanthuroidei are two examples of how I've ended up doing things. I do tend to refer to "genera" as such, and occassionally "families", but I'm happy to say I've managed to become reasonably rank-free at higher levels.

There was fair amount of e-mail discussion when Palaeos.org was started up about how to handle the conflict between Linnaean-based and phylogenetic classifications, and whether to go with the accuracy of a fully phylogenetic approach or the convenience for non-specialists of a ranked approach. Unfortunately, I don't have the correspondence saved anywhere any more, but the side-by-side approach used in many of the templates (see Mollusca, for instance) was something of an uneasy compromise.Christopher 21:18, 8 May 2008 (PDT)