[Taxacom] Geophylogeny

[Bob Mesibov]

Buried in the 19 June TAXACOM post on the Biennial Conference of the 
Systematics Association is news of a talk to be given by David Kidd of the 
National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) in Durham, NC. The talk is 
titled "Geophylogenies: threading evolutionary graphs through earth 
history".

More about geophylogeny can be found on the NESCent wiki:
https://www.nescent.org/wg_EvoViz/Geophylogeny
and at
http://vw.indiana.edu/07netsci/entries/#evolution

The wiki says:"In a 'geophylogeny' a phylogenetic model (tree, network, etc) 
is explicitly linked to spatial data describing the location of sampled tip 
entities and inferred nodes."

It's refreshing to see these investigators try out an explicit, transparent 
methodology in an attempt to put the "spatio-" back into the 
"spatiotemporal" process that we recognise as evolution. Perhaps they'll 
make some headway against the following entrenched beliefs in contemporary 
systematics:

1. Geographical location is a not an informative character. In fact, it's 
not a character at all. If I lose the specimen label, I have no idea where 
the specimen is from. Something not inherent in the specimen obviously has 
no value in systematics.

2. Location isn't inherited, therefore it isn't part of evolution. Of 
course, it's highly unlikely that a new species will suddenly differentiate 
thousands of kilometres from its parent species, but that's just an 
*association*, not a real (i.e. genetic) linkage. I can't possibly use mere 
associations to inform a phylogenetic analysis, not matter how strong they 
are.

3. Evolution can be perfectly adequately represented as happening in an 
abstract mathematical space. I show terminal taxa and a hypothetical tree 
showing how they might be related through Time. "Time" is capitalised here 
because it isn't scalar clock time, but more a sort of vector without any 
magnitude. If I've got fossils and molecular clocks I might be daring and 
put a few dates or durations on the branching network, but they're 
incidental to the core hypothesis, like the baubles and tinsel I use to 
decorate a Christmas tree. As for putting locations on the tree, who wants 
those, except those biogeographical chaps?

Good luck to Kidd and Price, they've got an uphill struggle ahead.
---
Dr Robert Mesibov
Honorary Research Associate, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery
and School of Zoology, University of Tasmania
Home contact: PO Box 101, Penguin, Tasmania, Australia 7316
(03) 64371195; 61 3 64371195

Australian Millipedes Checklist
http://www.qvmag.tas.gov.au/zoology/millipedes/index.html
Tasmanian Multipedes
http://www.qvmag.tas.gov.au/zoology/multipedes/mulintro.html
Spatial data basics for Tasmania
http://www.utas.edu.au/spatial/locations/index.html
Biodiversity salvage blog
http://biodiversitysalvage.blogspot.com/
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