User talk:Platyhelminthes

Neoptera classification
Before you undo my revcersion of yourt reversion of my reversion - point taken. I only did the stuff as an interim measure to get rid of this (we certainly would both agree that this cannot have been left as it was).

In a nutshell, there are reasons why Wikipedia is wait-and-see about phylogenetic nomenclature - and that is what you did; the way I put it also an attempt to structure it into clades. But I am not an insect expert.

Anyways, let's restructure the system here! (that I didn't give sources shows already that I had to kludge it together). Leave me a msg and we can see what can be made of the published data. OR I will eventually stumble over the papers I need and craft some "no-regrets" solution[*] myself, but that may take time.

About the Dictyoptera - you are completely correct under the PhyloCode, which (IIRC) defines them as the LCA of mantids and termites (or somesuch) to the exclusion of stick-insects, gladiators and ice-crawlers. But since Wikipedia does not use the PhyloCode, the point is entirely moot... for even if you include the gladiators etc, they should form a very nice clade (see for example). An onomatophore-based taxonomy can thus simply start with the type species (Dictyoptera is so old, it has one) and progress down the tree until it conflicts with a sister clade. (In a Linnean system, one even ''has' to do this; the gladiators would be "a basal lineage of superorder Dictyoptera" or similar).

[*] Given the uncertain state of nomenclature, a system that is as Linnean as necessary for everyone to understand it, while being phylogenetically sound seems the wisest choice. We tried it at Passerine and, well, apparently it works. There has been some new data but no major restructuring seems to be necessary ever again. Which is not bad for a system that classifies 60% of all living birds. Note that nothing formally regulates any taxon above family. There is more leeway than the PN literature would seem to suggest. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 13:16, 5 April 2008 (UTC)