Tribe

From Palaeos

Linnaean hierarchy

Kingdom | Phylum | Class | Order | Family | Tribe | Genus | Species

A tribe is a rank in Linnaean taxonomy that is below family or subfamily level, representing a cluster of very closely-related genera. The tribal rank is relatively rarely used, though it is often useful in subdividing particularly large families (such as many insect families). The suffix for tribes is -ini in zoological nomenclature and -eae in botanical nomenclature.

'Tribe' is an anglicisation of the Latin tribus. Many older authors, writing before the establishment of the modern taxonomic hierarchy, used tribus as a generalised all-purpose rank for taxa that did not fall into any of the established ranks (e.g. Roewer (1923) recognised Tribus Eupnoi and Tribus Dyspnoi within Opiliones, at a rank that would today probably be regarded as infraorder).

References

Roewer, C. F. 1923. Die Weberknechte der Erde, Systematische Bearbeitung der bisher bekannten Opiliones. Gustav Fischer: Jena, 1116 p.

Credits

CKT070323