[Taxacom] paraphylophobia again

[Stephen Thorpe]

[Barry Roth] How about finding one synapomorphy uniquely shared by  
Strepsiptera and a subgroup of Insecta?

[reply] What if (a conclusive) one can't be found? How long should we  
keep looking? How much funding should we chew up in the process? How  
many other productive lines of biological enquiry should we give up?  
Let's all stop what we are doing and search for a synapomorphy linking  
Streps to another group of insecta! :)

[Barry Roth] Without imputing any kind of superstitious outlook to  
Stephen, this reminds me of the demands of creationists for  
"transitional forms."

[reply] I am glad you are not imputing any kind of superstitious  
outlook to me! The specifics of the Streps problem are what makes it  
appropriate to look for fossil intermediates, for no other approach  
has worked. You need to read up on recent literature on the topic,  
such as:

Pohl, H.; Beutel, R.G.; Kinzelbach, R. 2005: Protoxenidae fam. nov.  
(Insecta, Strepsiptera) from Baltic amber ? a 'missing link' in  
strepsipteran phylogeny. Zoologica scripta, 34: 57-69.

and also:

Pohl, H.; Beutel, R.G. 2008: The evolution of Strepsiptera (Hexapoda).  
Zoology, 111: 318-338.

In short: creationism sux, but so does science when it gets too  
obsessed with answering intractable problems of phylogeny - so why  
don't we reassess our priorities and do something relatively neutral,  
like documenting the world's biodiversity? There are many hundreds of  
undescribed beetles here in N.Z., for example, but at current rates  
and trends, I fear that they will NEVER all be described...and all the  
funding is going down the sinks of those for whom Hennig is God (or  
Yahweh)!

S



Quoting Barry Roth <barry_roth at yahoo.com>:

> How about finding one synapomorphy uniquely shared by Strepsiptera  
> and a subgroup of Insecta?  I'm sorry, but the "search for a missing  
> link" model below seems too limiting.  We estimate phylogenetic  
> relationships of many (probably most) groups of organisms without  
> having intermediates.  Indeed, intermediates present their own kind  
> of taxonomic problem.  Without imputing any kind of superstitious  
> outlook to Stephen, this reminds me of the demands of creationists  
> for "transitional forms."
>  
> Barry Roth
>
> --- On Sun, 7/19/09, Stephen Thorpe <s.thorpe at auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
>
>
> The general problem is knowing when to stop and move on to something 
> more productive. Take the Strepsiptera problem, for example. A huge 
> amount of time and resources goes into trying to work out the 
> phylogenetic position of Strepsiptera within Insecta, but it cannot be 
> conclusively solved until a fossil is found which is half-way between 
> a strep and something else.
>
>
>
>
>
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