Icones wrote > Your approach would break the taxonomic rule that a genus should be > monophyletic, at > least as we understand it at the time. Just lumping things > together is not the > answer.
I must be missing something, because I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. Preferring a larger genus doesn't necessarily mean rejecting the idea that a genus must be monophyletic. Has anyone argued that the broadly defined Sophronitis of van den Berg et al. is not monophyletic? Chiron and Castor Neto don't seem to have argued that. They just broke the up large assemblage into several smaller genera. I would expect that smaller genera would create more problems regarding monophyly. If the relationship between Sophronitis cernua and Sophronitis coccinea is reassessed as a result of the new plastid DNA sequence, then the large genus Sophronitis (van den Berg) would remain monophyletic, but the smaller genus Hadrolaelia (Chiron and Castro Neto) would become polyphyletic. regards, Nick _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
