Having gotten a recent snail-mail letter from Rob M., I can verify that
he *is* alive and CPing. Our recent addition to the list Peter Northcote
no doubt even saw Roberto in the flesh this summer at the CP convention.
>> Then I would classify the 8 species of _Sarracenia_ as...
>> 00001=S.alata
>> 00011=S.minor
>> 01001=S.flava
>This system defines a singular point in a N-dimensional space for each
>species type. It seems like it might be better to allow a real value
>rather than a boolean value for each dimension. Also, it might be good
>to give both a mean and a standard deviation for each characteristic.
Ah, which is why I suggested converting each into decimal (for convenience
for those of us still used to having (about) ten fingers) and developing
errorbars. This could easily be expanded into Master's thesis length...
Regarding the recent renaming of _S.purpurea_ subspecies, I'm not sure
if everyone is aware of what a mess this will be if it is accepted.
You see, _S.purpurea_ has two subspecies---the northern widespread plant
and the southern plant. Until recently, it was clear that the northern
plant was _S.purpurea ssp. purpurea_ and the southern is _S.purpurea
venosa_. This bit of research by Reveal (so aptly named, as Jan pointed
out) indicates that the northern plant is being renamed, and so the
southern plant will now get the name _S.purpurea purpurea_. So it's not
a simple matter of renaming for both, but rather one of the names gets
switched! What a pain!
Kevin S.: did you just get my emailing re: 2 copies of Burbidge? Just
checking...
B