Farewell to: Farewell to Species - reticulation

[A Mitchell]

Hubert Turner wrote:

>On Tue, 01 Feb 2000 19:31:38 -0800, Curtis Clark wrote:
>>At 11:24 PM 00.02.01 +0100, Hubert Turner wrote:
>>>Because permanent splits are the only things recognized by a
>>>cladistic analysis,  in the ideal case (i.e. when no homoplasies
>>>occur to muddle the outcome of the analysis) the cladogram would
>>>be:
>>>
>>>A   B  C  Z     D
>>> \   \/   |    /
>>>  \   \   |   /
>>>   \   \  |  /
>>>    \   \ | /
>>>     \   \|/
>>>      \   /
>>>       \ /
>>>        /
>>>       /
>>>
>>>because apomorphies cannot be shared by common descent by only Z
>>>and D, or by only (B, C) and Z, or by only (B, C) and D. The whole
>>
>You wrote:
>>In real life, this doesn't often happen. Hybrid species or lineages
>often
>>get (or keep) more apomorphies from one parent than the other, so that
>they
>>resolutely cluster with one parent's clade.
>Obviously, and I did not add the provise 'in the ideal case' for exactly
>this reason. In practice, Z will indeed have more apomorphies in common
>with either D or (B, C), and group accordingly, but with the other
>apomorphies showing up as either parallel developments or as reversals in
>the sister group of Z.
>

Well how many of us deal with "the ideal case" in our (real life) every
day work?  If any of us did, we would soon be out of a job because nobody
needs a Ph.D. and years of experience to do something as easy "the ideal
case" (every character has a consistency index of 1 and phylogeny
reconstruction is child's play).  So in the "practical, ordinary,
conventional, usual, everyday case" cladistics will fail to accurately
represent hybridization events.

SIGH!!