The Tree Of Life
Jan 23rd, 2008 by Eats Wombats
The tree of life has been reorganized. That is the good news. The bad news is that you and I are now opisthokonts. Actually, we were all along. It sounds worse than it is.
You can see your pedigree in a nice tree here, but this tree now needs to be simplified a little.
It’s an interesting development in the increasing congruence between taxonomy and genealogy. I dabbled briefly in this field before I had to earn a proper living but not in time to get to play with molecular information. My never-published contribution, using an algorithm I developed that anticipated Google’s pagerank in some ways, was to suggest that a kind of auklet be moved in the family tree of seabirds to the puffin branch and renamed a pufflet.
I was disappointed later to discover that the word pufflet was not new. According to the OED it’s a small wind, and there’s a sea anenome called the painted pufflet, and, and, peuf I say. I thought it was a good diminutive for a little puffin.
These biologists need to take a class in marketing. Calling people and all their relations opisthokonts is not something that would pass any brand manager. But I suppose the Ass-whip Family wouldn’t pass either.
A case of the universe giving us the flagellum.
