Thank you Nick,
I am enjoying this exchange. This re-alignment of Laelia seems to
be driven by the enigma of one species, S. cernua. There has got to be a
better way, of the thousands of cladistic trees the computer program
generated were there any that solved the issue of S. cernua without
lumping it with Laelia tenebrosa? Would the results be different if
differnt DNA segments were chosen for analysis? If a different computer
program were used to generate the trees? I am just not confident the
methodology is the best for orchids.
Traditional taxonomy has its limitations, but it has a 250 year
history of development and refinement. Molecular cladistics is still on
its first use in orchid taxonomy. I think there is some serious 'proofing'
that needs to be done before molecular cladistics can be trusted and
allowed to rewrite nomenclature helter skelter.
What I think needs to be done is that molecular cladistics needs
to be applied to a few smaller, well studied and well understood groups,
to see if it yeilds logical results - before re-writing nomenclature for
more hetrogenous, problematic or poorly understood groups. It is one thing
to use this in cereal crops, which originated from a small handful of
species, it is another to expand it out to a group as diverse as orchids.
I will wait and see, I am most curious to see further research
shows.
Leo
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