[Taxacom] morphology in molecular phylogeny

[Michael A. Ivie]

Bad science is bad science, and happens in every field.  It is a 
reflection of the scientist, not the technique.  You and other cite such 
examples for molecular workers.  Thomas Lincoln Casey was strictly a 
morphology-based worker, and perhaps the worst beetle taxonomist who 
ever lived (there are other candidates for this honor, all 
morphologists).  I myself am a morphological worker, and sometimes get 
frustrated with molecular work, but in this line of discussion, it seems 
to be headed towards bad scientists tainting an entire technical field.  
I know people who do good work in molecular systematics who are also 
excellent taxonomists.  I also know people who do terrible work in 
morphological systematics who are morphologists.

Mike

Barry Roth wrote:

>I know of one situation where samples, all identified as the same species, were submitted to molecular systematists, who proceeded to report considerable diversity that "may well represent different species and even a different genus."  They went on to declare the system a "morphostatic radiation" (defined elsewhere as "considerable, rapid speciation with low anatomical diversification" and "low levels of anatomical change").  But the morphological "stasis" was not documented (a single character mentioned as unreliable was one long known by taxonomists to have little diagnostic value in the group in question).  I strongly suspected that the samples included specimens that, had they been reviewed by competent taxonomists, would have been recognized as different species based on morphology.  I was later able to confirm this by examining a few of the specimens that survived the analysis.  Fortunately, the "different genus" was removed from the array that was later reported by
> two of the original authors in an extended publication; but the "morphostatic radiation" remains a figment of ignored morphological data.
>   
>  Barry Roth
>  
>Maarten Christenhusz <maachr at utu.fi> wrote:
>  To continue the discussion about the destruction of evolutionary morphology in modern biology and systematics, I also think it is unbelievable that anyone can do taxonomy on a group solely based on molecular data, without taking the morphology into account. I would think that the samples used were identified by someone (who seldomly gets acknowledged for doing so correctly) using morphological characters (provided in keys or species descriptions). Many moleular people just believe the identification given with the specimen, without checking if these are correctly identified.
> 
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Michael A. Ivie, Ph.D., F.R.E.S.

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