nogods4me

Could be worse, could be the Splitters vs the Swallowers. (sorry )


I vote for splitting as well, smaller more narrowly defined seems to make the most sense to me. Heck, lumping taken to it's absurd extrem would bring us back to animal/vegatable/mineral

Minnesota

While the lumpers seem to be taking their lumps (groan), I would like to remind everyone that they came to prominence because the splitters--who held sway at the turn of the century--had devised such an incredible number of genera and species that the relationships among many organisms had become meaningless. The genus Ursus is a prime example. By 1918 86 species of brown bear had been identified. The splitters may have a point in regards to the classification of specific organisms, but no more so than the lumpers have in regards to other organisms.

theyeti

Both splitters and lumpers have their usefulness. Splitters are good for emphasizing relationships within established groups, and lumpers are good for empahsizing relationships between established groups. What it really comes down to is communication. As long as newly proposed groups help us understand the relationships between living things better, either splitting or lumping can improve taxonomy. The problem is, when both splitters and lumpers start going nuts with it, you end up with tons and tons of newly proposed taxonomic groups, which most certainly does not improve communication.

In this specific case, I would prefer splitting the Hominid family in order to emphasize that chimps are more closely related to humans than they are to gorillas, rather than lumping humans and every extinct hominin into the same genus as the chimps.

theyeti

theyeti

Chimps and gorillas are already in different genera. And, according to one classification scheme at least, it appears that humans and chimps are in their own subfamily, the Homininae. So I don't see what the point is in changing anything.

theyeti

MrDarwin

In theory, the hierarchical levels of taxonomic classification are a compromise between splitting and lumping: taxa can be lumped into larger taxonomic groupings (families, genera, species) but these groups can also be subdivided (subfamilies, subgenera, subspecies), without making any changes to the basic unit of classification, the binomial species (genus + species epithet). One problem is that too many taxonomists have made changes involving this basic unit (in part because there has never been a consensus on what defines a "genus") which ultimately works against nomenclatural stability and gives taxonomists in general a bad name.

Non-praying Mantis

Instead of moving chimpanzees into the genus Homo, why shouldn't we move humans and other extinct "Homos" into the genus Pan?

Humans could be Pan sapiens (wize chimpanzee). That would really piss the YECs off!

NPM

MrDarwin

Determining which name to use should be a simple matter based on the rules of zoological nomenclature. According to the rule of priority, whichever genus name was validly published first would be retained as the valid name if the two genera are combined. Anybody know? (I'm assuming that Homo is the older name, if only because we knew ourselves before we know of chimpanzees!)

Edited to add that, although a google search didn't answer my question, I did come across this tidbit, which I think is a pre-publication version of the paper under discussion:

Human and Chimpanzee functional DNA shows they are more similar to each other than either is to other apes

Non-praying Mantis

My bet is Linnaeus gave us the name Homo sapiens [edited to add: my bet was right]. So, if he named Pan as well, then I don't know which name would take precidence (sp?).

Edited to add: Thanks, MrDarwin! That settles it, then. Since
Pan is newer in the nomenclature, Homo would be the new genus name of both man and chimpanzee.

NPM

pangloss

No, it 'tried' it one several years ago and has stuck with it. Apparently, every now and then some one 'new' catches wind of it.True. I mean, why apply a standardized criterion when self-absorbed paleoanthropologists want to arbitrarily assign new ranks and give new names to just about everything they find?

pangloss

Amazing...

Having known not only Goodman for several years, but most of the coauthors as well, I can assure you that "media attention" is th elast thng on their minds...