[Taxacom] Primates (was: burn out)

[John Grehan]

Ken,

So with Pongidae sensu Kinman the family is just an expression of your
personal opinion. So ok - nothing to debate on that. Much of what is
changing phylogenies comes from molecular work - and that stuff is not
cladistic anyway.

John Grehan 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-
> bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Kenneth Kinman
> Sent: Thursday, April 23, 2009 9:54 PM
> To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: [Taxacom] Primates (was: burn out)
> 
> Hi John,
>        Well, relative stability is certainly one of my goals.
However,
> it is secondary to the more important goals of usefulness and maximal
> information.  As Richard Zander has often noted, strict cladifications
> reflect only branching patterns, and therefore too often omit valuable
> information of other kinds.  Sadly, strict cladifications are also
> increasingly destabilizing, except in those cases where large
> evolutionary gaps make strict cladifications more valuable (simply
> because ancestor-descendant relationships are unknown, due to lack of
> pertinent fossils).
>        Clearly there are many things to consider besides stability.
And
> as you well know, controversies over what data is most
phylogenetically
> informative adds just another variable that one must consider.  All
> these various uncertainties convince me that a paraphyletic Pongidae%
is
> best, and its relative stability is also a secondary, but valuable,
> benefit.
>         ----Ken
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------
> John Grehan wrote:
> Ken,
> If 'stability' is your justification then perhaps you should group
> tarsiers with other prosimians because that was the 'stable'
> classification until it became 'unstabilized' by the haplorrhine
> argument.
> 
> 
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