[Taxacom] morphology in molecular phylogeny

[Karl Magnacca]

Two comments on this thread:

1) While I certainly acknowledge that there are problems today with 
molecular data overriding morphological, I think people are reading too 
much into the job announcement.  Even though it wasn't explicitly 
stated, I don't think anyone would consider someone who is going to be 
doing taxonomic revisionary monographs to be qualified if they don't 
have a decent morphology background.

2) Part of the problem with using hominid evolution as an exemplar for 
what is wrong with the molecular/morphology situation (never mind the 
rest) is that the field is mostly done by anthropologists rather than 
evolutionary biologists, and has a much higher than normal proportion of 
crazed egotists.  So it's hard to compare with any other area we'd be 
likely to talk about (well, I can think of one in particular, but we'll 
leave that for another day).

Karl
=====================
Karl Magnacca
UC-Berkeley, ESPM Dept.
137 Mulford Hall #3114
Berkeley, CA 94720
http://nature.berkeley.edu/~magnacca/