How big is a genus? Towards a nomothetic systematics

A genus is a taxonomic unit that may contain one species (monotypic) or thousands. Yet counts of genera or families are used to quantify diversity where species-level data are not available. High frequencies of monotypic genera (~30% of animals) have previously been scrutinized as an artefact of human classification. To test whether Linnean taxonomy conflicts with phylogeny, we compared idealized phylogenetic systematics in silico with...