horrible cladists, was Re: paraphyletic Rodentia??

Curtis Clark jcclark at CSUPOMONA.EDU
Fri Oct 15 13:06:48 CDT 1999


At 01:07 PM 10/15/99 -0500, Richard Jensen wrote:
>Gee, I still teach these things to my students.  There simply are
>systematic problems (e.g., related to group recognition, relationships
>within and among populations) that cladistics can't solve.

Absolutely! My current graduate student is doing what is effectively a
phenetics problem, at and below the species level. But there are some
problems that *only* cladistics can solve.

>> Prediction: in 25 years there won't be any "cladists". There won't be
any
>> need for the term. They will be called "systematists".
>>
>What odds are you giving?

Odds are, I might still be alive, and I might still care. :-)

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Curtis Clark                  http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
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