Editing Cladistics (section)

=== Naming stability ===
If there is unclarity in mutual relationships, there are a lot of possible trees. Assigning names to each possible clade may not be prudent. Furthermore, established names are discarded in cladistics, or alternatively carry connotations which may no longer hold, such as when additional groups are found to have emerged in them.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Dubois |first=Alain |date=2007-08-01 |title=Naming taxa from cladograms: some confusions, misleading statements, and necessary clarifications |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1096-0031.2007.00151.x |journal=Cladistics |language=en |volume=23 |issue=4 |pages=390–402 |doi=10.1111/j.1096-0031.2007.00151.x |pmid=34905840 |s2cid=59437223 |issn=0748-3007}}</ref> Naming changes are the direct result of changes in the recognition of mutual relationships, which often is still in flux, especially for extinct species. Hanging on to older naming and/or connotations is counter-productive, as they typically do not reflect actual mutual relationships precisely at all. E.g.  Archaea, Asgard archaea, protists, slime molds, worms, invertebrata, fishes, reptilia, monkeys, ''Ardipithecus'', ''Australopithecus'', ''Homo erectus'' all contain ''Homo sapiens'' cladistically, in their ''sensu lato'' meaning. For originally extinct stem groups, ''[[Sensu|sensu lato]]'' generally means generously keeping previously included groups, which then may come to include even living species. A pruned ''[[Sensu|sensu stricto]]'' meaning is often adopted instead, but the group would need to be restricted to a single branch on the stem. Other branches then get their own name and level. This is commensurate to the fact that more senior stem branches are in fact closer related to the resulting group than the more basal stem branches; that those stem branches only may have lived for a short time does not affect that assessment in cladistics.