Despite the widely held belief that modem biological taxonomy is evolutionary, some of the most fundamental concepts and principles in the current system of biological nomenclature are based on a nonevolutionary convention that pre-dates widespread acceptance of an evolutionary world view by more than a century. The development of a phylogenetic system of nomenclature requires reformulating these concepts and principles so that they are no longer based on the Linnean categories but on the tenet of common descent.
Copyright © 1994. Published by Elsevier Ltd.