[Taxacom] Molecules vs Morphology

[John Grehan]

> Perhaps, but the point was that when congruence between molecular and 
> morphological results it is not always congruent throughout. 

> I am somewhat confused by this. If evolution does not act on every
aspect
> of the organism equally all the time and lineages are independent why
would
>  you expect congruence throughout? You can  have local incongruence
between
> any two particular datasets simply out of chance or because the
gene-tree
> of one molecular dataset is different from the other due to the
speciation 
> process. It is the average of many datasets that you want as your
best-
> available-hypothesis.

I was not referring to different molecular data sets. Molecular data
might support an accepted relationship between some taxa, but not for
other taxa in the group being analyzed. The molecular data is supposed
to be infallible for the accepted grouping and yet returns a false
relationship for other taxa. This has occurred in some primate studies.


> "Increasing availability of molecular data can help develop new
approaches >(propaganda statement] by pinpointing characters that
reliability capture phylogenetic relationships versus those consistently
subject to homoplasy." 


Best, Jason
> Translation, congruence helps identify the grain from the chaff. How
is 
> this propaganda? Would the statement have been more acceptable if it
read 
> ''by pinpointing POSSIBLE candidates?> 

Wrong translation. Correct translation - congruence helps identify the
grain from the chaff by identifying grain as that which is congruent
with molecules, and chaff which is not.

John Grehan

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