To the Editor — The April issue of Nature Plants featured an editorial (Nature Photoaerogens?)1 addressing my proposal of the term photoaerogen to refer to cyanobacteria, eukaryotic algae and plants collectively. Of course I was thrilled that my essay2 received such high-profile attention. But I also felt that the editorial frequently misses the point. Its subtitle and first paragraph highlight, with amusing anecdotes, the difficulties and fundamental arbitrarity of classification systems. Yet my essay made no suggestions regarding classification or biosystematic nomenclature. Photoaerogen was explicitly proposed as a term without taxonomic implications. While some biological concepts group organisms biosystematically according to phylogenetic affinities, others recognize common functional or ecological properties regardless of phylogeny (e.g. saprotroph, anaerobe, parasite, thermophile, pathogen and endophyte). Photoaerogen belongs in the latter category. Although there is in fact a phylogenetic thread that interconnects the photoaerogens, it is at the level of the photosynthetic apparatus, not the organism as a whole. The cyanobacteria, eukaryotic algae and plants comprise many distinct boughs of the tree of life but share oxygenic photosynthesis, a tremendously significant process that eukaryote lineages repeatedly acquired by lateral transfer of the cyanobacterial photosynthetic apparatus. The Nature Photoaerogens? editorial quotes from Shakespeare, “That which we call a rose/ By any other name would smell as sweet.”. My proposal, however, did not seek to rename anything. Instead, it suggested a name for an important concept currently without one. The editorial assures the reader that Nature Plants will not change its name anytime soon, but the suggestion that it might be time to abandon the word plant comes from the editorial itself, not from me or any other cited source. The caveat with ‘plant’ is simply that most contemporary users do not intend it to include microorganisms such as cyanobacteria, diatoms, cryptomonads, euglenids, coccolithophores or dinoflagellates. That is an observation, not a prescription. As long as Nature Plants rarely if ever publishes papers on such organisms, its current name is perfectly suited. On the other hand, if the editors eventually find that highly relevant research on cyanobacteria and eukaryotic algae is being sent to competing journals by authors unaware that Nature Plants would consider their work, the journal might at that point consider rethinking its strategy.
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