New Christidis & Boles

[Andrew Taylor <>]

On Tue, Jan 22, 2008 at 08:14:25PM +1100, John Leonard wrote:
> The ordering certainly isn't magical because the taxononist is trying
> to put into a one dimensional list his/her conception of a three
> dimensional set of relationships.

To be pedantic a phylogentic tree isn't even two dimensional.
Taxonomists do have a few choices to make when converting a taxonomic
tree into a linear taxonomic order.  Given a phylogentic tree the size
of that for Australian birds, there are more possible taxonomic orders
than there are atoms in the universes.

Andrew