Abstract:
Despite having been utilized for over 250 years, Linnaean ranks are periodically dismissed by some systematists and evolutionary biologists. Here, we discuss recent criticisms and point out that they are often the result of a misunderstanding of both the meaning and the intent of such ranks. Although arbitrary in some cases, ranks contain meaningful taxonomic information, facilitate communication, and serve as proxies for a fully resolved and correctly dated tree of life. Ranks favor communication and evolutionary comparisons, but they do not make assumptions about equal age or diversity for any two taxa with the same Linnaean category.
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