Talk:Paleodicots

Why is Ceratophyllales not included with the list of palaeodicot taxa? Lavateraguy 21:01, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

This article still needs massive cleanup. The concept of "paleodicots" (the usual spelling, BTW), at least by that name, does not exist in the APG system although the article entangles the two. I'm still trying to track down the original introduction of the term, as well as its component groups. MrDarwin 21:20, 14 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Good checking. I, too, am going through the Brya articles and finding lots of interesting things that appear to be complete inventions or are not out of the research they claim to be.  Soltis and Soltis use the term paleoherb, I believe.  KP Botany 03:07, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

This page should simply be deleted if anyone gets around to it. I will propose it next time I'm in here. KP Botany 03:22, 17 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I oppose deletion--the term and concept have been used, just not by APG--although as I already said, it needs major cleanup. MrDarwin 13:31, 17 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I've attempted a major rewrite, which I hope will solve some of the problems. MrDarwin 14:41, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Still trying to find the origin of this term, which is rather obscure. Earliest so far is Leitch et al. 1998. MrDarwin 15:47, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

APG II has Chloranthaceae, rather than Chloranthales. But there's a tendency in recent work to give ordinal rank to the clades represented by the unassigned "palaeodicot" families in APG II, i.e. Amborellales, Nymphales and Chloranthales. Lavateraguy 20:31, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Quite right, thank you for catching that and my other errors (confusing order with division--d'oh!). (I think I need a nap.) MrDarwin 20:39, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Merger
This term is an older term that is seldom used, while "basal angiosperm" is the currently used and common term. The merger should go the other way. However, I would rather just develop the basal angiosperm article into something credible and leave this as is. Maybe this could go under paleoherb. --KP Botany (talk) 06:28, 24 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Basal angiosperm is a vague term. Like paleoherb and paleodicot, it to a certain extent predates the research which has led to a fairly high degree of agreement about the 8 groups of angiosperms and their relationships.  I'd probably redirect basal angiosperm to ANITA grade; this isn't the way the term is used at tolweb.org but it is the definition used by, for example, Pollination biology of basal angiosperms (ANITA grade) (2008). This definition makes phylogenetic sense, unlike ones that include some but not all of the Mesangiospermae. Kingdon (talk) 15:13, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Basal angiosperm is the term in use among plant systematists. Do a scholar search and a literature search through databases.  It's used in my plant taxonomy and botany textbooks, it's used.  ANITA grade and paleoherb are not in current usage and are dropping out of usage other than referring to early work that used those terms.  The question is not which of the three terms, but which sources include monocots implicitly or explicitly.  --KP Botany (talk) 06:57, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, I'll agree that basal angiosperm is used, but so is "ANITA grade". I did a google scholar search for "ANITA grade" and got 131 hits, many of which were after 2000, which I take to mean this term is certainly in wide use.  "basal angiosperm" got 964 hits.  One article, The chloroplast genome of the “basal” angiosperm Calycanthus fertilis – structural and phylogenetic analyses puts it in quotes (which I presume is because magnoliids aren't especially more basal than eudicots or monocots, as they seem to have diverged within about 5 million years, well after the ANITA grade families).  Many use "basal angiosperm" in a context like "most basal angiosperm", where it is all about the rooting of the angiosperm tree, rather than about drawing a line between basal and non-basal. Anyway, the wording probably isn't the most interesting question (I'll agree that "paleoherb" and "paleodicot" are obsolete).  The real question is what articles, if any, we should have. I'm almost tempted to redirect the whole mess to angiosperm where we already discuss the classification. Another choice is to have an article like phylogeny of angiosperms which is all about the relationships, monophyly, and early evolution of the 8 groups of angiosperms but which doesn't explicitly exclude any of them (it would talk about eudicots or monocots as a group, rather than going into detail about any particular groups within them). The various terms would redirect to that. Another option is to more or less keep the concept of having an article for basal angiosperms, but rename/redirect from paleodicot to, I guess, either "ANITA grade" or "basal angiosperm". Kingdon (talk) 13:30, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I would prefer others redirect to basal angiosperm. It has enough in the literature to support it, and, because it but not the other terms are used in my current textbooks, I think it will be the lasting term.  I have no time now.  --KP Botany (talk) 00:33, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I have the time and am fine with the suggestion of merging Paleodicot and ANITA grade into Basal angiosperms. I've revised the merge tags accordingly.  What I would like is to hear whether others, besides me and KP Botany, think this is a good idea. Kingdon (talk) 19:11, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Before I saw this discussion I followed the merger proposal on ANITA grade to basal angiosperm where I read that "some biologists also exclude monocots from the group." WTF? Who are these botanists that still think monocots are basal? If these articles get merged, it is going to be very important that the merger capture the evolution of our understanding of the area. i.e. clearly flag archaic terms and notions as archaic. Hesperian 23:04, 2 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The "paleodicot" concept comes from molecular systematics and concerns extant taxa. Leave "paleo" out of it and call these taxa what they are:  basal angiosperms.  Or, to be even more wonky:  stem group angiosperms, as opposed to crown group angiosperms. --Una Smith (talk) 04:37, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Re the ambiguity of "basal angiosperm" that Kingdon mentions: the literature is in flux, hence the ambiguity is appropriate.  This merge proposal concerns Paleodicots;  I support merging that article into Basal angiosperm.  I also support merging ANITA grade into Basal angiosperm.  --Una Smith (talk) 04:48, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * If I understand the terminology correctly, they're still crown group angiosperms; not stem group angiosperms - a stem group angiosperm is less related to Amborella and Rosa than each is to the other. However, I agree on merging the various articles at basal angiosperm. Lavateraguy (talk) 15:29, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree that Basal angiosperm is the best term; it's something even a zoological systematist can understand ("basal" has its own issues, but is widely used in phylogenetics, and most people with any biological education know what an angiosperm is). "ANITA grade" is very jargony, and although "grade" is as useful as "basal", "ANITA" willl most likely cause non-botanists to scratch their heads. "Paleo"-anything is problematic, for the reason Una mentions.--Curtis Clark (talk) 14:35, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * basal is most readily explained as referring to early diverging low diversity clades. Lavateraguy (talk) 15:29, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * In case I wasn't clear enough above, I now agree that Basal angiosperm is the best name for the article (and probably the best term in general, although that might require a little dancing around how broadly one defines the term). I plan to perform this merge within the next day or two if there is no further feedback. Kingdon (talk) 18:15, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I see the scope of the term "basal angiosperm" as belonging to the article's content, not to its scope. --Una Smith (talk) 20:15, 4 March 2009 (UTC)