Cladistics and "Eclecticism"/erratum

[Pierre Deleporte]

sorry for this mistake:

Pierre Deleporte wrote:

""In the present case, some symplesiomorphies of the two taxa could be 
mistakenly taken as autapomorphies of the "unchanged" terminal taxon. 
Correct, but is there a remedy to such a mistake, given than we have no 
time machine to go back in time and observe the evolution of the ancestral 
population? There is no label "false autapomorphy" written on the character 
of the specimen at stake. Thus, is this an issue at all for systematics? 
Misleading data may mislead us, and what can we do to that?""


In fact, there should not be properly a symplesiomorphy taken as an 
autapomorphy when change occurs in only one of two sister groups for an 
exclusively shared character state, simply ambiguity as for the 
optimization of the character state at the common ancestral node.
I should have talked of ambiguity, instead of misleading data.

Pierre



Pierre Deleporte
CNRS UMR 6552 - Station Biologique de Paimpont
F-35380 Paimpont   FRANCE
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