Let's drop taxon! populations are definitively NOT always taxa. They may be in some specific circumstances but dont deserve the general term I support Rich's argument albeit not in full because taxa are actually not opinions based but hypotheses inferred by phylogenies, unless a tested hypothesis qualifies for an opinion. In any case, whatever we may mean with taxa, populations are clearly not covered in most cases. Nico Sent from my iPhone On Jul 14, 2011, at 4:51 AM, Gregor Hagedorn <g.m.hagedorn@gmail.com> wrote:
On 14 July 2011 08:41, Richard Pyle <deepreef@bishopmuseum.org> wrote:
My turn to disagree (strongly, in this case). It's not an instance of a taxon, it's an instance of an Organism. A taxon is merely a non- factual (i.e., opinion-based) attribute of an organism, secondarily associated via an Identification instance.
WIth respect to organism: strictly, Viruses are not organisms, but I could live with that. But the goal is to find a term including population. Population definitely is not an organism.
I believe the instances of taxon are organisms, populations, individuals.
Gregor _______________________________________________ tdwg-content mailing list tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content