Farewell to Species - reticulation

[Hubert Turner]

On  Mon, 14 Feb 2000 10:35:41 -0500, Thomas DiBenedetto
<TDibenedetto at DCCMC.ORG> wrote:
>that does not mean in any way that a non-phylogentic, a non-evolutionary
>taxonomy should be considered acceptable anymore. How much longer will it be
>until the evolutionary perspective is fully integrated into the conceptual
>architecture of biological thought?

And how much longer will it be before people realise that other
systems of ordering biological information are not necessarily
erroneous (depending on the purpose of the ordering in the first
place, of course)?

TdiB:
>-----------------------
>T.S[chlemmermeyer]:
>Thus, it is only logical that taxonomy itself cannot and should not be based
>on ancestor-descendant relationships already in the first take, rather
>ancestor-descendants relationships may be products that come out of good
>taxonomies.
>------------------------
>I dont see systematics or taxonomy having much of anything to do with
>ancestor-descendant relationships. [...] Systematics is about
>discovering the sister-group relationships of taxa.

A phenetic systematist (or an 'evolutionary' systematist, for that
matter) might see it differently.

TdiB:
>How could one discover anything about phylogeny through the use of
>non-phylogenetic taxonomy?

By using the appropriate units (terminal permanently split lineages,
or sets thereof) in your phylogenetic  analysis, together with
appropriate variables (heritable characters and their states, or sets
thereof), irrespective of what other investigators might call them
(variety-species-clade, e.g.).
Hubert Turner
--

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Dr. Hubert Turner
EEW, Sect. Theoretical Biology & Phylogenetics
PO Box 9516, 2300 RA  Leiden, The Netherlands
Visiting address: Van der Klaauw Laboratory, Kaiserstraat 63, Leiden
Phone: +31-71-5274904    Fax: +31-71-5274900
E-mail: turner at rulsfb.leidenuniv.nl
WWW: http://wwwbio.leidenuniv.nl/~turner/index.html

FROM 18 JANUARY TILL MID-APRIL I WILL BE AT THE NEW YORK
BOTANICAL GARDEN AS VISITING SCHOLAR, DOING MOLECULAR
PHYLOGENETIC RESEARCH ON ANACARDIACEAE. MY REGULAR E-MAIL ADDRESS
WILL REMAIN FUNCTIONAL DURING THAT PERIOD.
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