*plural taxa*
(back-formation from taxonomy)
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*in ‘biology’, a taxon is a group of 1 or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by ‘taxonomists’ to form a ‘unit’*
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(although neither is required, a ‘taxon’ is usually known by a particular ‘name’ and given a particular ‘ranking’, especially if and when it is ‘accepted’ or becomes ‘established’)
(it is not uncommon, however, for ‘taxonomists’ to remain at odds over what belongs to a ‘taxon’ and the ‘criteria’ used for ‘inclusion’)
(if a ‘taxon’ is given a formal scientific name, its use is then governed by one of the ‘nomenclature codes’ specifying which scientific name is correct for a particular grouping)
(although preceded by linnaeus’s system in systema naturae (10th edition, 1758) and unpublished work by “‘Bernard’ and ‘Antoine’ Laurent de Jussieu”, the notion of a unit-based “natural system” of biological classification was first made widely available in 1805 through the publication, as the introduction to the 3rd edition of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s flore françoise, of Augustin Pyramus de Candolle’s Principes élémentaires de botanique, an exposition of a system for the “natural classification” of plants)
(since then, ‘systematists’ have striven to construct an accurate classification encompassing the diversity of life; today, a “good” or “useful” taxon is commonly taken to be one that reflects evolutionary relationships)
(many modern ‘systematists’, such as advocates of ‘phylogenetic nomenclature’, use ‘cladistic methods’ that require ‘taxa’ to be ‘monophyletic’ (all ‘descendants’ of some ‘ancestor’))
(their basic ‘unit’, therefore, is the ‘clade’ rather than the ‘taxon’)
(similarly, among those contemporary taxonomists working with the traditional ‘linnean (binomial) nomenclature’, few propose ‘taxa’ they know to be ‘paraphyletic’)
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(an example of a well-established ‘taxon’ that is not also a ‘clade’ is the class ‘reptilia’, the ‘reptiles’; ‘birds’ are descendants of ‘reptiles’ but are not included in the ‘reptilia’)
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