I’m aware that families, subfamilies and tribes are meaningless ranks made up entirely by humans, but most families that are big enough are divided into subfamilies. If those subfamilies are big enough, they are divided into tribes. But the Rhamnaceae totally skips the subfamilies and is divided dir…

I’d suggest documenting stories like this in a collective blog. Then, revisit the data along with how the data is stored. Could Rhamnaceae be stored in a different structure that is more consistent with the rest of taxonomy while preserving the story in the blog? The reason this might be so impor…

Well, if among many genuses (:o) some are more closely related, why not group those genera in a tribe? And if among many tribes, it is shown one day that some are more closely related, why not group those tribes in a subfamily?

Would it be correct to say that it’s a secondary grouping somewhat independent of the main grouping? … “some are more closely related” ~ does “some” refer to genera :o) or species oh… nevermind lol “why not group those genera”… you’re referring to genera but you used both words. brain sleepy

If they are further instances of nested groupings, might they one day further support applied science? Role based bundling of hierarchical nodes… A restorationist working on a woodlot in the midwest is focused on a specimen in the Euonymus genus. The iNat glasses, having been set to “newb” and aw…

Well, I do not believe there is any standardization for what a subfamily or a tribe is. So if you notice the genera in the family clump into groups, why not call those groups subfamilies?

or why not cautiously start small with e.g. ‘subtribe’ ? (the goal being to lump closely-related genera together, rather than splitting broadly-encompassing units)

I think subfamily is supposed to be used mainly when there are an unwieldy amount of tribes and/or there are useful natural groupings between tribe and family: https://www.bgbm.org/IAPT/Nomenclature/Code/SaintLouis/0008Ch1Art004.htm So, Rhamnaceae isn’t skipping subfamilies, it just isn’t adding t…

Why is the Rhamnaceae only divided into tribes?

Nature Talk

pmeisenheimer April 16, 2024, 1:49am 8

If the taxonomy is based on cladistics it would preumably be because the group of tribes constitute a clade that clusters with other clades that are families, not subfamilies.

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Why is the Rhamnaceae only divided into tribes?

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