[Taxacom] Geophylogeny

[John Grehan]

It's nice to see this sort of stuff as geographical information has long
been recognized as an informative character in panbiogeography and
geographic information is an explicit element of track analysis. 

One of the web sites I viewed from the provided links mapped a phylogeny
onto geography, but this approach still does not treat the geographic
relationships as independently informative since they are not part of
the tree building process (at least that's my impression and I would be
happy to be corrected).

The inheritance of location, or places as an integral element of
inheritance has also been explicit in panbiogeography and the
theoretical nature of the principle was discussed by Russell Gray in
1989.

John Grehan


> -----Original Message-----
> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-
> bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Bob Mesibov
> Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2007 9:28 PM
> To: TAXACOM
> Subject: [Taxacom] Geophylogeny
> 
> 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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