de Queiroz Kevin
Department of Vertebrate Zoology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560, USA.
Syst Biol. 2007 Dec;56(6):956-74. doi: 10.1080/10635150701656378.
Although the proposition that higher taxa should correspond to clades is widely accepted, current nomenclature does not distinguish clearly between different clades in nested series. In particular, the same name is often applied to a total clade, its crown clade, and clades originating with various nodes, branches, and apomorphies in between. An integrated system of clade names is described based on categories of clades defined with respect to lineages that have survived to the present time. In this system, the most widely known names are applied to crown clades, the names of total clades are formed by adding a standard prefix to the names of the corresponding crowns, and the names of apomorphy clades describe the specific apomorphies with which they originated. Relative to traditional approaches, this integrated approach to naming clades is both more precise concerning the associations of names with particular clades and more efficient with regard to the cognitive effort required to recognize the names of corresponding crown and total clades. It also seems preferable to five alternatives that could be used to make the same distinctions. The integrated system of clade names has several advantages, including the facilitation of communication among biologists who study distantly related clades, promoting a broader conceptualization of the origins of distinctive clades of extant organisms and emphasizing the continuous nature of evolution.
尽管高级分类单元应与分支相对应这一观点已被广泛接受，但当前的命名法并未清晰区分嵌套系列中的不同分支。特别是，同一个名称常常被用于一个总分支、其冠部分支，以及源自其间各种节点、分支和衍征的分支。本文描述了一个基于相对于存活至今的谱系所定义的分支类别而形成的分支名称综合系统。在这个系统中，最广为人知的名称被用于冠部分支，总分支的名称是通过在相应冠部的名称前添加一个标准前缀来构成的，而衍征分支的名称则描述了其起源所依据的特定衍征。相对于传统方法，这种对分支进行命名的综合方法在名称与特定分支的关联方面更为精确，在识别相应冠部和总分支名称所需的认知努力方面也更为高效。与可用于进行相同区分的其他五种方法相比，它似乎也更具优势。分支名称综合系统具有若干优点，包括便于研究远缘分支的生物学家之间进行交流、促进对现存生物独特分支起源的更广泛概念化，以及强调进化的连续性。
