[Taxacom] systematics eggs in one basket

[John Grehan]

Ken,
 
Cladists might 'penalize' non-cladists for paraphyly simply because the groupings do not include all members of the unique common ancestor. You are welcome to disagree with that view, but dismissing practioners as brainwashed or conditioned is resorting to rhetorical devices that could be leveled at you as much as anyone else. We are all free to make our decisions whatever they may be. I don't see what the phylocode as to do with the matter since the phylocode is not something that any cladist need necessarily support (I don't for one).
 
Its interesting that you are an "electicist" when it comes to paraphyly, but not when it comes to morpholgy which you chose suppress in classification of humans and great apes when it does not support molecular similarity. 
 
You make the metaphysical claim that there should be molecular evidence to support the morphological connection with the orangutan. I say this is metaphysical because that link has not been empirically demonstrated.
 
You need not intuit hidden agendas when it comes to the australopiths. Its simply a matter of how the shared derived characters match up with respect to other taxa - something that you cannot decide with molecular characters either. I would be surprised if all australopiths turn out to be more closely related to orangutans, but I have no intention of showing it.
 
John Grehan

________________________________

From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu on behalf of Ken Kinman
Sent: Fri 2/2/2007 2:53 PM
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] systematics eggs in one basket



John,
     Well, brainwashing might be a little too harsh a word.  Maybe I should
say they are *conditioned* to believe paraphyly is unnatural and/or bad and
therefore must be eliminated from formal nomenclature.  The important point
is that electicists do not penalize strict cladists for recognizing
holophyletic taxa, but strict cladists *do* penalize electicists for
recognizing paraphyletic taxa.  Strict cladists have been the increasingly
aggressive "alpha males" of taxonomy for over three decades now, but the
internet is slowly allowing more talk of a counterrevolution (paradigm
shift, if you will), and perhaps PhyloCode will be the straw that finally
breaks the camel's back.  Then taxonomists will feel free to use
paraphyletic taxa without fear of losing funding opportunities, having
papers rejected, or other forms of harassment (subtle or otherwise).

     As for morphological and molecular data being incongruent, that just
shows more work must be done to find character sets that *are* congruent. 
Ericson et al. (2006) is a step in the right direction for birds, and
similar teams are making progress on other taxa.  Unfortunately, I doubt
that any molecularist would want to team up with you given your extreme
distrust of sequence data.

    Anyway, as I have said before, if you should also find convincing
molecular evidence for your hypothesis, I would probably move my
{{Hominidae}} exgroup marker up to the orangutan clade.  Until then, it will
continue to be shown as clading with chimps.  Either way, the contents of
Family Pongidae remain stable.  I don't think Australopithecines are likely
to be removed from Hominidae, but you are welcome to try to show that
orangutans are even closer to humans (that's going to be an even harder
sell).  Anyway, if the orangutan hypothesis is correct, there should also be
molecular evidence that is congruent with your morphological data.  I've
seen no such molecular evidence, and it certainly isn't due to my not trying
(I really tried, but with no success).  If the orangutan hypothesis is
wrong, maybe you will have at least forced primatologists to produce a list
of morphological synapomorphies that are congruent with their molecular
data.
     ----Ken
**********************************
John Grehan wrote:

>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).
>
<snip>
>
>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
>

_________________________________________________________________
Invite your Hotmail contacts to join your friends list with Windows Live
Spaces
http://clk.atdmt.com/MSN/go/msnnkwsp0070000001msn/direct/01/?href=http://spaces.live.com/spacesapi.aspx?wx_action=create&wx_url=/friends.aspx&mkt=en-us


_______________________________________________
Taxacom mailing list
Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom