Biology

Clades

A clade is a monophyletic rooted tree; the root is known as the most recent common ancestor. Note that not all collections of animals or plants form clades, and also note that horizontal gene transfer does not invalidate membership within a clade.

Some non-animal non-plants, particularly viruses and bacteria, can also form clades; however, their treatment is not required for the baseline.

The following tables include PhyloCodes which have been registered at RegNum. A PhyloCode is a registered taxon denoting a clade for international biologists.

Exact Clades

The following cladistic assignments are sufficiently on-the-nose that we ought to define these selbri using the clades. In this sense, the precise definitions of these clades are given by scientific consensus among biologists rather than by some specific listing of genes or apomorphies.

The following inclusions definitionally follow:

Approximant Clades

The following cladistic assignments aren't tight; there may be members of the clade which aren't members of the species in the {fe} slot. Nonetheless we can still do a bit of pointless topology on them: whenever {bu'a} has exact clade X, {bu'e} has approximant clade Y, and Y is in X, then {bu'e} is included in {bu'a}.

The following inclusions definitionally follow:

Non-clastistic Animals

• curnu: worm, invertebrate
• danlu: animal
• finpe: fish
• jalra: cockroach, orthopteran, termite
• jukni: spider, arachnid, crustacean, lobster, crab
• spati: plant, herb, greenery

Non-clastistic Plants

• kobli: lettuce, cabbage
• palma: [exp] palm tree, Palmae, Arecaceae

Species

Fruits

• badna: banana, plantain
• figre: fig
• guzme: melon, squash
• perli: pear
• plise: apple
• smela: [exp] plum, peach, cherry, apricot, almond, sloe, Prunus
• tamca: tomato

Leaves

• tanko: tobacco

Roots/Bulbs

• patlu: potato
• samcu: cassava, taro, manioc, tapioca, yam
• sunga: garlic

Seeds/Grains

• bavmi: barley
• cunmi: millet
• mavji: oats
• maxri: wheat
• mraji: rye
• rismi: rice
• sodbe: soya
• sorgu: sorghum
• zumri: maize, corn

Related Words

• grute: fruit

• tsiju: seed

• dembi: seeds of bean, pea, legume

• pezli: leaf

• xrula: flower, blossom, bloom

• narge: nut

• genja: root

• tricu: tree

• jbari: berry

• fusra: rot, decay, fermentation

• birje: beer, ale

• jikru: liquor, spirits

• vanju: wine

• xalka: alcohol

• cakla: chocolate, cocoa

• ckafi: brewed coffee

• tcati: brewed tea

• stagi: edible plant, vegetable

• korki: cork, harvested tree bark

• gurni: grain, cereal

• mudri: wood, lumber

• jalna: starch

• fibra: [exp] fiber

Issues

{kobli} refers to both lettuce (Lactuca, milky sweet, also asparagus and chickory) and cabbage (Brassica, alkaline savory, also broccoli and many more). This is probably a mistake; the gloss conflates them as "leafy vegetables" despite many cultivars (asparagus, broccolini, etc.) which are not especially leafy. Similar issues plague {guzme}.

{latna} refers to Lotus, Nymphaea, and Nelumbo. Probably Nymphaea, because the definition emphasizes religious use within particular cultures. This is curious because {marna} doesn't have the same places, and only refers to Cannabis specifically.

Some cultures pair roses and lilies symbolically. For that reason, {lelxe} was proposed to complement {rozgu}. I have nothing against this one, and am tempted to include it as a nod to la lelxe.

{smela} is the sort of gismu that I want to fix while it's still experimental. Right now it refers exclusively to the fruits of Prunus, rather than the trees; it should be more flexible, like {nimre}. {plise} and {perli} are similarly weird and possibly worth fixing. However, it might not be feasible to fix them and instead we will need a class for fruiting plants.

What is {jbari}? Are all {guzme} also {jbari}?

It is not clear whether {gurni} refers to processed products only. Presumably the unprocessed kernels are {tsiju} instead.

{dembi} and {debyspa} are not great. It turns out that Leguminosae (PhyloCode 60) has very hard edges due to the way that legumes grow; their aggressive and reliable production is due to nitrogen-fixing behavior not found in other fabids. ("Fabid" just means "bean-like plant". Legumes have been farmed since prehistory for the nitrogen fixation, leading to lots of historical names.) So, if only we had a proper lujvo for legumes, we could assign it an exact clade.

Other Issues

What is {jmive}? The Anglophone approach is near-useless because the following objects are all-or-nothing on {jmive}:

• Galaxies
• Stars
• Biomes
• Forests
• Lithotrophs
• Viruses

So the Anglophone approach might be to give up and say that {jmive} is Earth-centric: life is "homeostatic arrangements of organic chemicals in thermal non-equilibrium," quoting la korvo.

la gleki points to the Russophone approach, in particular the axioms of B. M. Mednikov, and proposes the valsi {mednikovo} which indexes them. This approach includes the following characteristics of life:

• Homeostasis
• Organization
• Metabolism including an anabolic and catabolic component
• Growth
• Adaptation
• Response to stimuli
• Reproduction or autocatalysis

And of non-life:

• Cessation of brain function ({co'u})
• Divergence of homeostasis
• Cessation of metabolism

la gleki gives a translation from Russian to English of Mednikov's axioms:

"mednikovo li 5". x1 is the organism that shows repeatedly amplified changes in the body's genetic programs being subject to selection by environmental conditions (Charles Darwin axiom)

"mednikovo li 3": x1 is the organism showing its genetic program transferred through generations having random non-directional changes (successful only in given environment) as a result of various reasons (Charles Darwin axiom)

"mednikovo li 2": x1 is the organism that shows taking genes of its parents for forming its offspring (N.K. Koltsov axiom)

"mednikovo li 1": x1 is the organism that shows the unity of its phenotype and the program for its construction (genotype) inherited from its ancestors (Weissman axiom)