Archezoa

In biology, Archezoa is a term that has been introduced by several authors to refer to a group of organisms (a taxon). Authors include Josef Anton Maximilian Perty,[1] Ernst Haeckel[2] and in the 20th century by Thomas Cavalier-Smith in his classification system. Each author used the name to refer to different arrays of organisms. This reuse by later authors of the same taxon name for different groups of organisms is widely criticized in taxonomy because the inclusion of the name in a sentence (e.g. "Archezoa have no olfactory organs") does not make sense unless the particular usage is specified (e.g. "Archezoa sensu Cavalier-Smith (1987) have no olfactory organs"). Nonetheless, all uses of 'Archezoa' are now obsolete.

  1. ^ Perty, M. 1852. Zur Kenntnis kleinster Lebensformen nach Bau, Funktionen, Systematik, mit Spezialverzeichniss der in der Schweiz beobachteten. Jent & Reinert, Bern
  2. ^ Haeckel, E. 1866. Generelle Morphologie der Organismen Vols I and II. Reimer.