[Taxacom] Fw: Re: Phylogenetic classification?

Sun Aug 2 07:55:18 CDT 2009

I am always somewhat amused when people have opinions on biogeography, but they are so busy that they don't have the time to 'trawl' through the relevant literature. And it was only one paper that was suggested. I would also suggest Stephen Thorpe take the time to read Heads (1989) NZJ Zoology 16:549-585. It should only take 15 minutes to sort out the relevant information. Not an undue burden for anyone interested in biogeography surely.

As Heads points out, the pattern is a normal type of 'fringing island' biogeography seen in many countries. One may invoke dispersal (that once imagined accounts for everything), or sampling error, but they are not imperative. Even if islands in NZ are 'in general, better known, there have been decades of mainland sampling that has yet to refute the reality of the fringing system of tracks in New Zealand (or sampling anywhere else for that matter).

John Grehan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-
> bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Stephen Thorpe
> Sent: Saturday, August 01, 2009 8:05 PM
> To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Fw: Re: Phylogenetic classification?
> 
> Well, Michael, I haven't time to trawl through your publications
> looking for examples, so could you please cite some examples of
> putatively monophyletic groups endemic to the northeastern North
> Island arc of offshore islands (Three Kings down to say the Aldermans,
> or something)? Preferably, invertebrates, rather than plants. If you
> are correct, there ought to be examples of both. I note that there are
> several SPECIES with distributions like this, but that is hardly
> relevant to a discussion on speciation mechanisms. Examples of such
> species include the plant Meryta sinclairi (Three Kings, Poor Knights,
> Hen), and the giant weevil Anagotus turbotti (Three Kings, Poor
> Knights, Chickens). I also note two more possible explanations for
> such patterns:
> (1) dispersal by seabirds, which seem to prefer to breed on small
> islands (even in pre-rat times?). This can account both for plant
> distributions (through seed dispersal via birds), and invertebrates
> which live in bird nests and could be transported on the body of a bird;
> (2) the insular invertebrate faunas of New Zealand are in general
> better known than the mainland fauna - everybody wants to go there on
> field trips, and higher population densities on confined islands make
> finding species easier. Hence there is a greater chance of mainland
> sister species being overlooked.
> 
> Stephen
> 
> 
> Quoting Michael Heads <michael.heads at yahoo.com>:
> 
> >
> >
> >
> > From: Michael Heads <michael.heads at yahoo.com>
> > Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Phylogenetic classification?
> > To: "Stephen Thorpe" <s.thorpe at auckland.ac.nz>
> > Date: Saturday, August 1, 2009, 10:24 PM
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Dear Steve,
> >
> > Explanation 1 doesn't account for the offshore island group being a
> > monophyletic clade. Explanations 2 and 3 don't work for the general
> > case where there is a sister taxon on the mainland.
> >
> > Other possible explanations include faulty taxonomy in every example
> > (!), chance dispersal in the eye of storms ('given enough time even
> > the most unlikely events become inevitable') etc. But these are
> > all ad hoc arguments to explain away what is a normal type of
> > 'fringing island' pattern seen in many countries, e.g. the ABC
> > islands, Margarita etc. off northern Venezuela; the Moluccas,
> > Geelvink Bay islands, and the Bismarcks off northern New Guinea;
> > Mentawei islands off southern Sumatra; Japan - Taiwan etc. These all
> > correlate very nicely with major fault zones.
> >
> > Michael
> >
> > Wellington, New Zealand.
> >
> > My papers on biogeography are at: http://tiny.cc/RiUE0
> >
> > --- On Sat, 8/1/09, Stephen Thorpe <s.thorpe at auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
> >
> >
> > From: Stephen Thorpe <s.thorpe at auckland.ac.nz>
> > Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Phylogenetic classification?
> > To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> > Date: Saturday, August 1, 2009, 9:51 PM
> >
> >
> > Dear Michael and World,
> >
> > Firstly, I was being neutral between vicariance and dispersal
> > theories. If we take the Three Kings as an example again, the small
> > populations that became isolated and evolved into new species may have
> > got there either by vicariance or dispersal.
> >
> > Secondly, it is not at all clear that Three Kings endemics are "often
> > closer phylogenetically" to those on other eastern islands like the
> > Poor Knights. Three factors which may contribute to the illusion of
> > this are:
> > (1) convergent evolution to similar insular environments
> > (2) extinction from the mainland (due to rats, forest clearance, etc.)
> > (3) translocation between islands by Maori (eg. the Meryta sinclairi
> example)
> >
> > Stephen
> >
> >
> > Quoting Michael Heads <michael.heads at yahoo.com>:
> >
> >> Dear Steve et al.,
> >>
> >> This is what you'd expect based on Mayr's (1942) ideas that we were
> >> all brought up with. But after looking very hard for many decades,
> >> the geneticists now say there is little evidence for founder effect
> >> speciation. As for biogeography, the patterns in the New Guinea
> >> offshore islands that Mayr based his ideas on can be explained more
> >> efficiently by tectonic (strike slip) movements than by chance
> >> dispersal (see my New Guinea papers in J. Biogeogr. 2001 and 2002).
> >>
> >> The Three Kings endemics are often closest phylogenetically not to
> >> the mainland species that are closest geographically, but to
> >> sisters on offshore islands much further south (Poor Knights, Hen &
> >> Chickens, Chathams). The arrangement thus involves two parallel
> >> arcs, a mainland one and an offshore fringing islands one, and it
> >> seems very unlikely that e.g. the Poor Knights species dispersed to
> >> the Three Kings. This suggests that the outer arc may have been
> >> accreted to the inner one. See my New Caledonia paper (J. Biogeogr.
> >> 35: 2153. 2008) for notes on the Loyalties - Three Kings Ridge
> >> (probably a Cretaceous structure) and its accretion to New
> >> Caledonia/New Zealand from an origin further out to sea.
> >>
> >> Michael Heads
> >>
> >> Wellington, New Zealand.
> >>
> >> My papers on biogeography are at: http://tiny.cc/RiUE0
> >>
> >> --- On Sat, 8/1/09, Stephen Thorpe <s.thorpe at auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> From: Stephen Thorpe <s.thorpe at auckland.ac.nz>
> >> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Phylogenetic classification?
> >> To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> >> Date: Saturday, August 1, 2009, 7:53 PM
> >>
> >>
> >> To expand a little on my former comment about paraphyletic species:
> >> Probably the concepts of 'monophyly', 'paraphyly', etc. are wrongly
> >> applied to species. GROUPS OF SPECIES are monophyletic or
> >> paraphyletic, not the species themselves. When we talk about
> >> decendants being included, we don't mean individuals decended from
> >> other individuals by parent-offspring relationships, we mean species
> >> decended from other species by speciation events. Even if we do
> >> somehow apply the concepts to species, there is no reason to "dislike"
> >> paraphyletic species in the same (Hennigian) way as for paraphyletic
> >> groups. For all we know, and I am convinced that this is true,
> >> probably most if not all cases of speciation renders a "parent
> >> species" "paraphyletic" in the sense we are talking about. I see
> >> abundant evidence for founder effect speciation! Just compare, say,
> >> the fauna of the Three Kings Islands with that of the adjacent New
> >> Zealand mainland. A small population of a widely distributed species
> >> becomes isolated on the islands, and evolves quickly (being a small
> >> population) into a distinct new species, while the mainland ones
> >> remain largely unchanged...
> >>
> >> Stephen
> >>
> >> Quoting Michael Heads <michael.heads at yahoo.com>:
> >>
> >>> Dear Ken et al.,
> >>>
> >>> In their book 'Speciation' (2004: 401) Coyne & Orr concluded that
> 'there is
> >>> little evidence for founder effect speciation'. Note that
> >>> these authors are not rabid
> >>> cladists or wacky vicariance biogeographers but
> >>> eminently respectable population
> >>> geneticists who can be taken seriously.
> >>>
> >>> Michael Heads
> >>>
> >>> Wellington, New Zealand.
> >>>
> >>> My papers on biogeography are at: http://tiny.cc/RiUE0
> >>>
> >>> --- On Sat, 8/1/09, Kenneth Kinman <kennethkinman at webtv.net> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> From: Kenneth Kinman <kennethkinman at webtv.net>
> >>> Subject: [Taxacom] Phylogenetic classification?
> >>> To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> >>> Date: Saturday, August 1, 2009, 2:45 PM
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Hi Richard,
> >>>        Such an expectation by some cladists that
> >>> ancestor-daughter species "inexorably" become sister species seems to
> be
> >>> largely wishful thinking. This might tend to occur in cases where the
> >>> daughter species has a population that is not greatly smaller than the
> >>> population of the mother species. However, such an expectation seems
> >>> rather unlikely in frequent speciation where there some element of
> >>> "founder effect", especially when the mother species is highly
> >>> polytypic. This would be most evident in extreme cases where the
> founder
> >>> is a single pregnant female (such as for metazoans) or even a single
> >>> seed (for plants) which manages to survive in a new environment and is
> >>> reproductively isolated.
> >>>       The paraphyly is even more evident when one adds the time
> >>> dimension and considers the earlier history of the mother species
> (which
> >>> would usually be broader both genetically and phenotypically) than it
> >>> was at the later time when it gave rise to its daughter species.  If I
> >>> was a strict cladist, I would find it VERY disturbing to conceive of
> one
> >>> sister species having perhaps evolved a considerable period earlier
> than
> >>> its sister species.  Given the lack or sparsity of a fossil record
> >>> (along the stem between nodes) leading to most such species pairs,
> >>> having no good evidence of relative age makes it even more
> problematic.
> >>>        Extinction and a poor fossil record is truly a double-edged
> sword
> >>> that can make the recognition of clades both useful in the face of
> that
> >>> lack of information, but often only temporarily useful and subject to
> >>> destablizing challenges to that cladistic recognition when fossil
> >>> intermediates are eventually discovered.  The trick is to occasionally
> >>> use paraphyly where cladistic assumptions seem likely to be overturned
> >>> by new information (fossil or otherwise).  Paraphyletic speciation
> (and
> >>> paraphyly at higher taxonomic levels) is too common for strict cladism
> >>> to continue hoping that it won't cause them any major problems (and
> >>> classificatory unstability for us all).  Stability and usefulness
> >>> require the occasional use of paraphyletic taxa at appropriate points
> in
> >>> the Tree of Life.
> >>>       ---------Ken Kinman
> >>>
> >>> ----------------------------------------------
> >>> Richard Zander wrote:
> >>>           As far as I can figure it out,
> >>> phylogeneticists expect a species that is paraphyletic (many exemplars
> >>> with a different species coming out of the middle of the lineage of
> >>> exemplars) to eventually become a sister group (reciprocally
> >>> monophyletic is the phrase). Therefore, a paraphyletic species should
> be
> >>> considered different from the autophyletic species because it will
> >>> inexorably become a sister group to it as exemplars get their act
> >>> together and homogenize their molecular data through recombination and
> >>> gene conversion and whatnot.
> >>>
> >>>
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