Turning around

[Richard.Zander at MOBOT.ORG]

It's turning around.

The original idea of molecular taxonomy (I believe) was to infer nested
events of genetic isolation (following the Biological Species Concept) from
accumulations of evolutionary neutral molecular mutations. The limitations
of this simplistic idea are many and have become obvious, and, I hope,
embarrassing. Evolutionary development, proteomics/phenomics, and a
resurgence of taxonomists interested in process-based evolution are
presently attacking the default definition "systematics is phylogenetics and
its applications in classification."

______________________
Richard H. Zander
Bryology Group, Missouri Botanical Garden
PO Box 299, St. Louis, MO 63166-0299 USA
richard.zander at mobot.org <mailto:richard.zander at mobot.org>
Voice: 314-577-5180;  Fax: 314-577-0828
Websites
Bryophyte Volumes of Flora of North America:
http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/bfna/bfnamenu.htm
Res Botanica:
http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/index.htm
Shipping address for UPS, etc.:
Missouri Botanical Garden
4344 Shaw Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63110 USA

-----Original Message-----
From: buchen [mailto:cb2009 at COLUMBIA.EDU]
Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 9:51 AM
To: TAXACOM at LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU
Subject: Re: [TAXACOM] TDWG/GBIF GUID-1 Workshop Report

I wish I could believe that there are still sane people out there, looking
at the biology of an organism rather than the genetic makeup.  I think it is
more important to register the gene expression, the structure and function
rather than to compare mindlessly sequences against each other and build
phylogenetic tress based on only a single gene and not the whole organism.