Homology (was Striking a balance etc.)

[Mark Garland]

Curtis Clark wrote:

>At 01:56 AM 2/16/01, Pierre Deleporte wrote:
>>Right! A human is homologous to a chimp is homologous to a starfish...

>Is homologous to a ... buffalo grass clone? an Armillaria mycelium? Even
>at this level, homology is not self-evident.

I was groping toward the idea that the idea of homology must have an upper
limit (organ-system level? organism level?), but Tom DiBenedetto and Pierre
Deleporte say otherwise.

So here's another (final) ignorant question:  is homology between two
complex (higher-level, more abstract) biological things, like species, or
organisms, or large chunks of organisms like limbs, qualitatively different
from homology between two less complex (lower-level, less abstract) things,
like base pairs?

I assume the answer will be no, and that the only difference between
homologies is whether they are phylogenetically informative or not.

Seems like something's missing here.

Ignorantly,

Mark Garland
Florida Department of Environmental Protection
2600 Blair Stone Road, Mail Station 2500
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-2400





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