[Taxacom] systematics eggs in one basket

[John Grehan]

> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-
> bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Ken Kinman
A paraphyletic Family Pongidae (great apes) giving rise to Family
> Hominidae certainly beats all the various (and confusing) strictly
> cladistic
> versions that have been generated.

Only trouble is that a paraphyletic Pongidae did not give rise to the
Hominidae, just the common ancestor of Hominidae and its sister group. I
can see a paraphyletic Pongidae as a descriptive term instead of "great
ape" but I don't see it as having any phylogenetic meaning apart from a
short hand way of saying a collection of more basal lineages. And
anyway, if the human-orangutan sister group is real, the Pongidae is
also monophyletic (or orangutans and their closest relatives) along with
Panidae (African apes). If Ken Kinman is truly eclectic he will include
both this along with the molecular phylogeny in his arrangement of taxa.

Just as a side issue, in my current analysis of characters for living
and fossil large bodied hominoids there appears to be strong support for
a monophyletic human-orangutan clade that includes a variety of fossil
apes. Also at this point the australopiths cannot be shown to be any
more closely related to Homo than to various non-hominid apes - probably
because they share just about the same number of apomorphies with
non-hominids as with Homo.

>       As for morphologists vs. molecularists, neither should
overshadow
> the
> other, and they should work in teams.  

This might be very nice sociology, but it is scientifically problematic
since there is no objective recipe as to how to 'integrate' incongruent
molecular and morphological data. Yes there are people who do that, but
it is just an individual philosophy. Given that sequence alignment
produces metaphysical homologies (i.e. they cannot be observed in
nature) I am naturally more inclined to favor well supported
morphological relationships over such sequence similarities. (yes that
is my individual philosophy too).

> 
>      Molecularists and morphologists need to work together, and
neither
> side
> should take the other for granted.  The trouble with most
molecularists is
> that so many of them have been virtually brainwashed into believing
> paraphyly is unnatural and bad, but then there are a lot morphologists
who
> have the same problem (especially in vertebrate paleontology). 

Or one could say that some have been "virtually brainwashed into
believing paraphyly" is natural and good. These are just different
perspectives and neither involves brainwashing.

John Grehan