>>If that is the case, I welcome any study that would attempt to justify transferring species of Elaphe to other genera on the ground of morphological disparity. Utiger et al.'s study deals not with morphological disparity but with branching order. They clearly delimit their taxa only on the basis of branching order, not morphological disparity. Phylogeny means both morphological disparity and branching order.



Absolute nonsense. "Phylogeny" means branching order, nothing more and nothing less. You may not like classification based on branching order only - fine, you are of course fully entitled to your views, but using your own unique, idiosuncratic redefinitions of commonly used scientific terms does not help your case.



>> Utiger et al. ignore morphological disparity



Quite rightly, since similarity due to shared primitive characters provides no evidence of common ancestry.



>>Wolfgang wrote:

>>Your taxonomic philosophy clearly differs from that of Utiger and from most praticing taxonomists. No problem, but you wqill have to accept that you are in a minority, and the rest of us have moved on.

>>

>>My response:

>>My taxonomic philosophy is indeed clearly different from that of Utiger et al. and from yours. But my taxonomic philosophy is clearly the same as that of H.G. Dowling, C.M. Bogert, Ernst Mayr, and Charles Darwin himself, not to mention a large number of veteran herpetologists who find no use for classifications that take into account only one of the components of phylogeny, namely branching order, while ignoring the other component: morphological disparity.



Note that the people you mention are either dead, or at least long past their systematic heyday. With all due respect to some truly great biologists, for whom I have huge respect, the direction of the discipline is determined by those who are leading the field now, not by those who led it 40 years ago. Our understanding of evolution and our conceptual framework of taxonomy have moved on. Stay behind if you want, but don't complain about others catching the train.



>>Science is not a popularity contest.



Neither is it an immutable fossil that must never change - quite the contrary.



Cheers,



Wolfgang
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