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Unstable And Stable Classifications Of Scombroid Fishes, Kent E. Carpenter, Bruce B. Collette, Joseph L. Russo

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Many cladists believe that a classification should strictly reflect a cladistic hypothesis. Consequently, they propose classifications that often differ markedly from existing ones and are potentially unstable due to phylogenetic uncertainty. This is problematic for economically or ecologically important organisms since changing classifications can cause confusion in their management as resources. The classification of the 44 genera of scombroid fishes (the mackerels, tunas, billfishes, and their relatives) illustrates this problem of instability. Previous cladistic analyses and analyses presented in this paper, using different data sets, result in many different cladistic hypotheses. In addition, the inferred cladograms are unstable because of …