Shaking up the system
I read “Pushing PhyloCode” [April] with interest. I sympathize with the proponents’ desire to improve the classification system, but I cannot agree with all of what is proposed. The current Linnaean system of naming species has an elegant simplicity and utility. One simply takes the genus name, which is a noun, and modifies it with an adjective, or species epithet. Thus Homo sapiens means “thinking man,” and Homo erectus means “upright man,” and so forth. The scheme presented in the article, which proposes dropping the binomial system and keeping only the epithet, so that instead of Homo sapiens the scientific name for humans would be sapiens Linnaeus 1758, would be a source of mass confusion among scientists and the public. There is only one Sciurus carolinensis, but there are many species that use the epithet carolinensis. The epithet is meaningless without the genus. How would we function with just a bunch of epithets, discoverers’ names, and dates? Any proposal to revise taxonomy should leave the binomial system intact.
John C. Jahoda, professor of biology
BridgewaterState
