I saw the same thing happen with bacteria. Names and assignment of species to genera were fairly stable until DNA sequencing became common. The assignments were based on things like cell appearance, metabolism and observable structures like cell walls reacting to common stains. "Gram negative" and "Gram positive" were important distinctions because you could just use crystal violet stain and make a guess (thought to be a good guess) about how to start categorizing that species of bacteria.
They got a convenient system that way. They grouped similar bacteria together.
Way back when I was in high school, there was an assumption not often made explicit to high school students: "if it looks similar, stains similarly, and metabolizes similarly, it is PROBABLY a fairly close relative". If it quacks like a duck, it's probably closely related to a duck.
That might have been true if the evolutionary history of bacteria was as simple as limbs radiating from the trunk of a tree, BUT it turns out to be more like a box of pretzels. Presumably there was a lot of convergent evolution, because very unrelated bacterial species evolved to metabolize the same way, and even look very similar, if they lived the same way in the same niches.
So now, bacteria that were once thought to be closely related becuase they were so similar in appearance, structure and function, have been removed from their old genus and plugged into another genus based on DNA sequence similarity.
I guess the source of my irk is that I have to discard old names and learn new ones. The fact that millions or billions of dollars worth of textbooks in effect need to be re-translated every few decades isn't my problem, but I feel sorry for anyone in that market.
Authors now need to specify the authority and even the DATE of that authority's pronouncements when they explain what naming "system" is being used in that edition of that textbook.
A science where the meanings of NAMES keeps changing is a science NOT very useful to anyone else. Too bad they hadn't kept the names that had been relatively stable for many decades, then added after the binomial NAME a third field stating the current theory of that species' proper genus.
I agree that we need to learn the actual evolutionary relationships among species, genera, Families and so on. No doubt we'll be changing the names of genera also, and even which Family and Class the old and new genera "belong to".
It might be unfortunate that we link the names so tightly to the family relationship, but that was done centuries ago. And the illusion of control and mastery bestowed by saying that WE know THE name of a thing is appealing.
Imagine if we had only given the elements numbers instead of names, and as we discovered new isotopes, the very names of the elements themselves changed? What used to be Element 37 might now become Element 38. That would have been a nightmare and made chemistry unteachable.
When I looked this up in re bacterial nomenclature, I found that the word "taxonomy" can be just ways of grouping and organizing things. It's within biology and recent common usage that it has to mean "grouping things according to their assumed familial relationships".
Search Results
tax·on·o·my
noun - Biology
the branch of science concerned with classification,
especially of organisms; systematics.
the classification of something, especially organisms.
"the taxonomy of these fossils"
a scheme of classification.
plural noun: taxonomies
"a taxonomy of smells"
It sure is inconvenient when NAMES change. I could wish that we declared a moratorium on name changes for, say, 3 more decades. Then we could talk at length about re-arranging species into this or that PROPOSED genus and no one would be confused. THEN, and perhaps every 20 years following, mass re-assignments would occur and we COULD have single listing of all changes. If they changed NAMES only every 20 or 30 years, staying abreast would be possible.
There's a conflict between "almost everyone" who wants a unique and stable name for everything ... and the few researchers who learn something new about archeo-geneology every day, and want to rush their discovery into print for all to see. I'm glad that they discover new ancestral relationships among species every week. I'm glad that information is updated in journals monthly. Arguing about that sort of thing and switching back and forth is a sign of a healthy science where stuff is happening.
But there's little need to throw everyone else on the planet into continuous confusion, which is what changing the NAMES every time someone publishes a technical paper does!
