[Taxacom] morphology and molecules again

[Jason Mate]

> Yes the article tested congruence, but judged the congruence of
one data set (morphology) against another (molecular). The converse was
never considered - as usual. 

Congruence is congruence. A
question is posed, is morphology useful/reliable to infer a phylogeny.
Result, yes, comparable to molecular data. For all we know they are
both useless because in reality this is a practical joke by a higher
being that created everything in 6 days, starting on October 26, 4004
BC, 9:00 am (no breakfast that morning, make note to create a choice of
morning drinks).

> In general their may be congruence, but
technically there is no congruence overall unless one quantifies and
argues that there is a larger number of congruent than incongruent
patterns and that somehow is more informative about the significance of
that match than the incongruence. One might argue that 'overall'
phenetic results 'mostly' match cladistic results and that phenetics is
therefore fine to use instead of cladistics.

Still congruence. Analysis of either data kind using comparable methods yields congruent results. No diff.

>
In the case of hominid evolution there is total incongruence - but no
one in the field sees that as a problem (rather an anomaly resulting
from the assumed falsity of the morphological evidence).

Only in
the placement of one taxon onto which too much attention is placed
considering that it is highly inbred and therefore genetically extinct.
I am not going to argue for either camp on the topic of Hominids but

>
The paper seems to assume that the molecular data is the better data.
This is an inference since the authors are not explicit.

The
authors have to compare morphology to some other kind of data. There is
no assumption on their part. Maybe the journalist has a bias in favour
of genetic data but then again you can't expect journalists to be
knowledgable in taxonomy or anything else really. In any case I think
most taxonomists/phylogeneticists are more careful now. Of course I
work with dung beetles so maybe it hasn't trickled up.


Best

Jason

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