sexuality & Trees of Life

[Ken Kinman]

Brian,
     I think you should perhaps read the last sentence which you wrote,
about ignoring one aspect of diversity in favor of another.  When you said
sexual reproduction is limited to a "small section of organisms", this is
precisely what you were doing, and the main reason I challenged the
statement.
     And I am certainly not one to underestimate the diversity of
prokaryotes.  I named Order Verrucomicrobiales in 1994 ("officially" named
by others in 1995), and I named Class Verrucomicrobea in 1994 (there is
still apparently no "official" name for this class, but Phylum
Verrucomicrobia was named about 1998, which I think was overdoing it to call
it a separate phylum).  I named the very distinctive Family Synergistaceae
in 1996, when I saw NCBI wrongly classifying Synergistes in Family
Clostridiaceae (which are totally unrelated), and it took over a year to get
them to finally change that.  I went further and named Order Synergistales
in 1998, but I've heard talk some think it should have its own phylum
too---I don't mind recognizing diversity, but there is such a thing as going
overboard.
     I don't think anyone has yet followed my lead in recognizing the very
distinctive Order Thermodesulfobacteriales (which I also named in 1994).
And while we are on that subject, I wish Woese set the record straight:
Ether-linked lipids (even the branched-chained types) are not restricted to
Metabacteria (= "Archaea")--- they are found in the eubacterial order just
mentioned, plus Orders Thermotogales and Aquificales as well.  Ignoring
evidence of intermediacy between Eubacteria and Metabacteria is something
Woese appears to be good at.  And even the rRNA distances between these
so-called Domains continues to shrink.
     So please don't dismiss me as a zoologist who doesn't appreciate the
diversity of prokaryotes.  In fact, I believe it is Woese himself who
trivializes Eubacteria at the expense of "Archaea", and is badly misrooting
them in the process.  And for of those of you who saw that PBS show last
week, they were so surprised that the Thermotoga genome was so much like
those of "Archaea".  Well, I have news for them.  I clearly showed this
relationship in my 1994 book (5 years ago!!), where I showed Togobacteracea
giving rise to Metabacteria (i.e. "Archaea").  I sent Woese a copy of my
bacterial classification in 1994---there was no need for him and his
colleagues to be surprised at such genomic similarities.
      Getting back to the main point, I would quote your last statement:
"Accepting one aspect of diversity does not mean that the other should be
ignored."  I think this advice should be directed at Carl Woese, who bases
his so-called Tree of Life solely on rRNA distances.  And your own statement
that sexual reproduction is restricted to a "small section of organisms"
clearly reflects Woese's very restricted view of diversity.  And I don't
think entomologists probably cared much for that remark about the colours of
butterfly wings (even if some lay people probably still have that
misconception about taxonomy).
     I already fully appreciate the diversity of prokaryotes, and far from
sweeping it under the carpet, I have named new orders and classes of
bacteria (and not just those named above).  However, if microbiologists want
zoologists and botanists in general to appreciate prokaryotic diversity more
fully, I wouldn't suggest doing it by trivializing Metazoa and Metaphyta as
a "small section of organisms".  There are a lot more yardsticks than just
the rRNA gene.  I've personally studied hundreds of bacterial rRNA
sequences, and they are important.  But I certainly don't believe in this
extreme Woesian pendulum swing, and calling Metazoa and Metaphyta little
"twigs" on the tree of life just because their rRNA sequence is stabilized.
That perspective is more extreme than the one it was supposed to correct.
                       ---------Ken Kinman
*********************************************************
>From: "B. J. Tindall" <bti at DSMZ.DE>
>Reply-To: "B. J. Tindall" <bti at DSMZ.DE>
>To: TAXACOM at USOBI.ORG
>Subject: Re: sexuality & Trees of Life
>Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 09:01:19 +0100
>
>Ken Kinman wrote:
>
>">     However, I think it is **extremely** misleading to say that sexual
> >reproduction is limited to a "small section of organisms".  In terms of
> >species diversity, far more species are sexual than are asexual, and far
> >more biologists study sexual organisms than study asexual ones."
>
>I thought someone might say this. This is an arguement based solely on the
>fact that zoologists and botanist have a vast list of species which have
>accumulated since primitive man first started to recognise the differences
>in different animals and plants. Even Linneaus had a wealth of data to work
>on. The study of prokaryotes is rather recent, lets say 100 years. If one
>takes a walk through a tropical rain forest then one quickly picks up all
>the plants, birds, insects etc living there with the naked eye, but
>everyone misses the diversity of prokaryotes present. Very few people seem
>to take into consideration that chloroplats and mitochondria are derived
>from prokaryotes and are as diverse as the eukaryotic cells which harbour
>them! The arguement is based on current statistics, which says we have
>named X million species of eukaryote, but only X thousand species of
>prokaryote. The real question is what really is out there, and this is
>where various sets of data indicate a fantastic untapped prokaryotic
>diversity (not just genetic data). These are points raised by both Mayr and
>Woese, but they both present arguements which do not really address
>eachother's point of view. Diversity is represented by more than the
>diversity of colours in butterfly wings. I fully accept the amazing
>diversity in eukaryotes, reflected in their morphology, but one cannot
>sweep prokaryotic diversity under the carpet. True eukaryotes are
>morphologically diverse, but then they are much more conservative in other
>aspects such as chemistry, biochemical pathways, areas in which prokaryotes
>excel. Accepting one aspect of diversity does not mean that the other
>should be ignored.
>Brian Tindall
>
>
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