GMTs

[Curtis Clark]

At 09:36 AM 10/26/99 -0800, Bruce Campbell wrote:
> The terms apomorphic,
>plesiomorphic, homoplasious, etc., exist to describe types of "natural"
>characters.  Any ideas on a term for the transgenetic (or graft induced)
>ones?

Homoplasy is false homology, and is dependent on the (mis)judgment of an
observer: If you think a feature is homologous, but it really isn't, then
it's homoplastic. If you knew it wasn't homology all along, there is no
need for a name for it.

Features of hybrid species derived from the parent species are homologies,
even when they screw up standard cladistic analyses. In the same sense,
transgenes and their products are homologies, if you taken an open view of
"common descent". Inasmuch as there are supposedly cases of lateral
transfer without human intervention, there is nothing qualitatively new
here.

Quantitative...now there's another issue. If all current knowledge were
lost, the biogeographers of the future would already be in trouble, and
perhaps the cladists won't be far behind.

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