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Two nits to pick, one major, one minor: Major: "Common names simply don’t work on a large scale. One common name (ie “cedar”) can refer to 8 different t
by fastaguy88 2mo ago
Two nits to pick, one major, one minor:
Major:
"Common names simply don’t work on a large scale. One common name (ie “cedar”) can refer to 8 different totally unrelated plants, where as Cedrus refers specifically to the genus which contains the species C. libani, C. deodara, and C. atlantica."
Actually, those 8 different plants are hardly "totally unrelated". They are quite closely related in the evolutionary scheme of things (plants have been around for 1.6 billion years). Red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) and Cedrus (Cedrus atlantica) are both plants, but also Pinidae (conifers), and diverged about 250 Million years ago (time tree.org), so more distantly related that mammals (~80 y), but midway between humans/platypus (200 My) and humans/ducks (320 My). Hardly unrelated.
Minor:
"Why is it [taxonomy] cool? Because we now group things according to how evolutionarily related are, and how they evolved."
Yes, we group things by how closely related they are, but not necessarily by how distantly related they are in time. Taxonomy is about branch order, not distance in evolutionary time. The same species in a genus may include organisms that diverged several million years ago, but other species may have diverged much more recently. Taxonomy is a kind of evolutionary history that need not have a very regular clock.
- cmpb 2mo agoTo nit 1: "totally unrelated" could reasonably mean "not in the same genus", but even relaxing that to "not in the same family" holds true for the word "cedars". The author's point about "common names" seems pretty salient To nit 2: I fail to see what you're actually nitpicking here... How evolutionary related things are and how they evolved _are_ pretty well illustrated by taxonomic ranking. Some organisms (in a stable ecology) don't change much over time and some things do, and taxonomy gives us a good way to discuss that.
- fastaguy88 2mo agoI suppose "totally unrelated" might mean not in the same genus to some set of taxonomists, but for the larger audience to which this essay was directed, unrelated might mean "is not related in any way" (as in, does not share a common ancestor). Yes, they are "totally unrelated" in the sense that I am likely totally unrelated to you, but this not a very evolutionary sense of the word "related".
- magicalist 2mo ago> Yes, they are "totally unrelated" in the sense that I am likely totally unrelated to you Why would you assume that the "larger audience" would assume that "unrelated" means that these species of trees came from independent origins of life on earth instead of this totally normal and common sense of the phrase that you use here?