Taxonomy - questions of terminology

Highlighting subgenera in these cases, in my opinion, is really the best solution - both it preserves naturalness and does not create confusion.
Simply, unlike the genus, the remaining ranks can not be accepted at all, using a rankless (bulk) nomenclature. But what about the genus included in the binomial? If it is as subjective as, for example, a unit, how do I apply the criteria of the volume nomenclature to it? Does the extension of the principles of volume nomenclature to the genus lead to a possible revision of the species naming scheme (i.e., to the elimination of the binomial)?
On the other hand, paleontologists who have to work in time distinguish the genus as the main working category, not the species.

This post was edited by Dracus - 10/22/2005 14: 21

And if there are not enough gradations? The same Metrioptera s. l.: bicolor and roeselii, at least "offhand" (I didn't go deep), will be closer to each other than to brachyptera.

By the way, has anyone tried reading Kluge's famous book on the taxonomy of insects? And I was surprised by his ideas in the field of nomenclature...

Sorry, but there's really no time. So I temporarily disappeared from this forum.

Stanislav K. Korb aka Diogen

In another forum, I noted that I had recently become very disappointed in taxonomy, but while reading this forum, I thought that I didn't know too much in this area. However, we managed to formulate several provisions:
1. (Most important) Where are the view borders? Probably, after all, it is impossible to determine this by morphological features reliably. And the concept of "freely interbreeding and leaving fertile offspring" is also problematic.: How do I define"free-crossing"? After all, if two animals cross in the laboratory, this does not mean that they will cross in natural conditions. (They will breed with a very low probability, the offspring will be fertile, but it will be "difficult" for them to live, for example, due to too much competition)
2. How do I determine proximity? By signs? Like what? Which ones are considered more important and which ones are considered less important? How do I find out what, for example, is a family and what is a superfamily? I watched the classification of insects and mammals at this level and for some reason it seems to me that in mammals the taxa are completely fragmented. For example, why is drosophila a genus and bulls a subfamily? I got the impression that the size of a taxon depends on the level of our knowledge: the more there are, the smaller the taxon is.
3. An epilogue. The degree of kinship is of course a real thing, since some organisms have accumulated more mutations in comparison with cancer forms, others have accumulated less, and there may still be "less significant" ones, but we are still unable to quantify this, since the" significance " of a mutation, that is, how it affects the survival of an organism, we do not know how to determine exactly (it still depends on the environment of the organism), in addition, because if there are abrupt changes in forms in evolution, then this is the exception rather than the rule, especially at the level of somewhere families and below, so degrees of kinship are gradients, not steps, whereas categories, such as classes, orders, families, genera, and species, with all sub - and super-levels. This is probably the reason for the differences in their size in different groups of organisms. Although, on the other hand, it is relatively convenient and we have nothing better.

A paraphyletic taxon is a nasty thing. In my opinion.
At the expense of taxa-I completely agree - the thing is becoming obsolete.

IMHO rankless taxonomy is nonsense.

Welcome back, Diogen.
Why do you think so?

In fact, Diogen, justify your point.