Vieja Genus Broken Up?

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Burto;4792978; said:
If you don't like it, I don't see why. Reality doesn't owe you any debt of being simple. I'd much rather live in a world where scientists are making new discoveries and striving to develop ever more accurate models of utility, than one where a halfhearted pseudo-ichthyologist dumps every neotropical cichlid into a couple genus, then the world shrugs and says meh, good enough.
If we just accepted near enough as good enough, or just believed whatever was more personally convenient, we'd still live in a world of medieval superstition where the sun orbits the earth and and disease is caused by evil spirits.
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Don't be angry.

I, for one, simple mindedly prefer the simple.

And the fact that is has no bearing at all in my fishkeeping, makes it even simpler.
 
From the discussion in CRC
"
in taxonomy everyone is free to publish his own view. Thus, there is no (one and only) official list of valid names.
The major 'problem' is - in this case -, that there are three or four different teams of scientists are currently working independently (and even in a kind of competition) on the systematics and nomenclature of the middle American cichlids. This is why we are miles away from a robust consensus.
Why it is hard to archive a scientific consensus is explained by Ernst Mayr, the 'Darwin of the 20th Century', he wrote in „This is biology“: "Some factors that work against acceptance of new ideas are not strictly scientific. Perhaps one author was disliked or had even offended the current establishment, while another had unexpected success with a subsequently refuted theory because he belonged to a powerful clique".
The question in this case is: should we accept many genera of middle American cichlids, or only a few. There are (at least) two schools of classification: (1) the evolutionary classification and (2) phylogenetic classification. Which school (or clique of scientists) will 'win' the race is still open"
 
Another quote:
The simple truth is that the concepts of species, genus and their relationships are not completely explained and defined in an iron clad contract. The adition of the genetic analisys gave a significant contribution but in the end it didn´t help in putting all this question in black and white terms and diluting all doubts. What we see repetedly is that the new nomenclatures are replaced in time, annoyingly to the fish keepers, which means that they are flawed and of course because the other taxonomists don´t agree with them. So a matter of opinion is indeed in the end what rules taxonomy which seems to be a not very cientific science...
 
If it wasnt what it was, then why was it called what it was? And why should we believe it is what it is now and it wouldnt be changed again later? Same goes for all the other cichlids.

What's going on? lol
 
...from the CRC discussion

"There are (at least) two schools of classification: (1) the evolutionary classification and (2) phylogenetic classification. Which school (or clique of scientists) will 'win' the race is still open"

In other words, there's no right or wrong answer on this stuff. Just different ways of organizing things.

Matt
 
burto you're right and I can't argue the point you make. I understand what Miguel is saying also. The bar down the street was Joe's Taveren for 50 years his kids sold it and now it's The Golden Apple. Everybody still calls it Joe's and by the time we get used to The Golden Apple it'll most likely be called somthing else so it'll continue to be Joe's and everybody knows exactly where/what we're talking about. It's just human nature. I used to have a sergeant years ago when the Army was changing uniform regs every time you turned around that would say "It's the improvements around here that are killing me" I never forgot that, how true in many ways.
 
All of this work reflects the use of new technologies to better understand the evolutionary development of cichlids - why they are the way they are...which evolved from which, etc.

Scientists have a lot of tools to use to accomplish this. Unfortunately, the tools available, the amount of funding for this kind of research (and the nature of life itself) don't lend themselves to absolute answers.

For the average hobbyist concerned about maintaining "pure" fish, it's much more important to concern yourself with the collection locations and provenance of the fish you keep/breed than the latest paper proposing to move this or that species from this genus or the other.

I find it interesting and illuminating to read about the different approaches and theories used to make determinations vs. worrying about relabeling the fish that I already have.

Matt
 
the animal guy;4793078; said:
If it wasnt what it was, then why was it called what it was? And why should we believe it is what it is now and it wouldnt be changed again later? Same goes for all the other cichlids.

What's going on? lol
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It was what it was then, it is now what it is now. What it was then was close enough that we didn't know any better and the model of utility worked well enough. It is now what it is now because we have better information to get it more right than before. As new discoveries are made, it may well be changed again, and rightly so, because it will then be more right than it was before.

This video of Isaac Asimov's essay on the relativity of wrong might help explain how science's process of refinement works.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tcOi9a3-B0
 
I think its good they are breaking it all down gives a better look on each species and subspecies
 
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